The Westministenders / Media Baron Hunger Games continues. Who is trying to outmanoeuvre who?

[RedToothBrush]

Don't worry we've all lost track.

In the Blue Corner
It started out with Cameron and Osborne trying to win the battle of the Tories, but they got stung in a UK wide vote. Some of us thought it was about the 'EU'. Instead it has turned out it was an internal Tory Bitch fight between some old Oxford and Eton mates, whilst for others a protest vote at being disenfranchised.
Gove and Johnson stabbed Cameron & Osborne in the back to run for Team Leave. Then they won when they didn't expect to. And there was no Plan. Uh Oh. Then it all started to go really wrong.
Cameron quit in disgust. Johnson went all President Churchill, before he also got stabbed by Gove (possibly with the assistance of the dark influence of Osborne).
We now have a Tory Smackdown with the shadowy influence of the Media Barons in the background.

#Team Gove has been doing their best with the knives. This is a mission to stab as many Tory MPs in the back as possible in order to become PM. Sponsored and supported by Murdoch

#Team Leadsom has been selling more unicorns and trying to pretend her CV and tax return are completely transparent. Think positive and the economy will be just fine. She is the homeopathy of politics. Sponsored and supported by Arron Banks, Leave.eu, UKIP and Britain First.

#Team May has been threatening to deport everyone if the EU don't play nice. Sponsored and supported by The Daily Mail's Dacre

In The Purple Corner
Tragically, it appears that not only do UKIP have a Plan A, they also have outwitted everyone by having Plan B. Yes that’s right TWO plans.
Farage has swanned off –sacked—for a life on CBB so they are looking for a new leader.
The potential candidates are all equally loathsome. They include Arron Banks himself, a suspended member of the party and several other people with an uncanny ability to put their foot in their mouths.
If this wasn't horrible enough, Team Leadsom is increasingly starting to look like a UKIP take over bid of the Conservative Party, which might be a neat way of avoiding a leadership battle of their own considering the quality of the candidates on offer.

In short, its a bit like a Bad Dystopian Movie that invokes Godwin, set in 2016 Westminster. Except its real.
In the Red Corner
Meanwhile the WMD has finally gone off in the Labour Camp, as Chilcot has been published. However the Chicken Coup rattles on regardless.

Corbyn is STILL clinging on, putting in a good claim for the Westminster 'Charlie off Casualty' Award. He has however had his Big Moment in the Commons. Which was a bit of a let down really. ...

The Unions have been trying to talk some sense into everyone. Meanwhile everyone else is has given up and are now just praying for a ruddy miracle to end this torture and give the country an opposition party.

Angela Eagle is still outside for the 5th day in a row, going "I will stand. Soon. If he doesn't quit" The BBC now qualify for a discount deal at the local Travel Lodge.

We FINALLY know who the fuck Owen Smith is! He's a Welsh MP and sounds like he's not completely away with the political fairies.

George Galloway appears to be trying to make a late bid to be included on the ballot paper for any leadership election.
Bliar's cried. We didn't. Chilcot took over 2 million words to tell us everything we already knew. As well as the fact that Mi6 like Nicholas Cage a lot.

The Cult of Momentum are still worshiping their Dear Leader by sending death threats to PR companies they suspect of disloyalty. Somehow they still manage not to get the title of the most vile pressure group in the UK.

And I suppose I should ask, when will a50 be triggered....? And by whom?

All these questions and more.
Tin foil hats now available upon request

Sense of humour compulsory. No experience necessary though

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2670552-Has-Boris-been-outmanoeuvred?pg=1 Previous thread 1

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2672388-Has-Boris-been-outmanoevered-Will-someone-please-tell-me-who-is-in-charge Previous thread 2

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/a2673982-Have-Boris-and-Jeremy-been-stabbed-in-the-back-Please-can-we-have-some-leaders Previous thread 3

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2675432-Boris-outmaneovered-Et-tu-Gove-Corbyn-The-Westministenders-Hunger-Games-Continues? Previous thread 4

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2678198-The-Westministenders-Hunger-Games-continues-Boris-still-trying-not-to-be-outmanoeuvred Previous thread 5

I really don’t want to become the resident Corbyn apologist, as I think these threads are bigger than that – and also I think what’s going on in the Labour party is the least of our problems – but just briefly if I may:

If the PLP has genuinely list confidence in JC, I think he and his team have to take that seriously and start trying uk find an honourable successor which he can support. (Unicorns)

In all fairness, that is not JC’s job. If anyone wants to challenge him, the rulebook provides for it. No one has yet, unless you count Angela Eagle, who will tomorrow. Probably. Maybe. She says.

And to be blunt about it, when people needed to see him, not necessarily expecting him to do the whole combative leader thing, he just wasn't there. He just went awol. When the chips were down and people needed him, he didn't step up and say 'SOMETHING. ANYTHING' (Red)

This is not actually true. He spoke publicly directly after the referendum. I was hoping he would denounce its validity, but he didn’t, which was disappointing to me personally, but not inherently unleaderlike. He said it would be undemocratic to ignore the result and that he would speak more fully after the weekend about Labour’s response to it. Unfortunately, that was then delayed by the mass resignations that followed almost immediately. But Labour members and voters did have the benefit of knowing where he stood asap.

By the sound of it, he's really not interested in doing the day to day stuff of leadership.

I read that too, but have no idea what or how reliable the source is. If true, then it's a problem, agreed. But why would it be? Does it seem even remotely plausible to you?

He doesn't appear to like the UK, its flag, anthem or armed forces (BigChoc)

I feel similarly tbh, particularly now. From what you’ve said upthread, you do too. I don’t think he has ever expressed dislike of the UK, but I don’t see why it’s bad to be critical of some of the post-imperial appurtenances of patriotism. It’s only quite recently that they’ve become so fashionable again tbh.

He totally let the party and the country down by failing to campaign for Remain. There is ample evidence of this. (KatieHopkins)

Just plain untrue. Sorry. I will challenge this rotten lie every time I see it. Corbyn campaigned tirelessly, visiting two, three, four constituencies a day, speaking - and listening - to ordinary people, particularly those who were not convinced by Remain arguments. I know that first hand because I saw it with my own eyes. If you mean his campaigning was not much in evidence in the media, well, yes, I can't argue with that. If there is one respect in which I can see Corbyn is problematic as leader, it is the hostility of the press and the unduly negative impact that that obviously has on everything he will ever do. Personally, I would rather keep Corbyn and take on the press, which has lots of other shortcomings as we all know. But I can respect the opposite view.

They sound like Chinese communists with all their talk of deselecting serving MPs who won majorities to impose ideologically pure candidates. (Doin)

Deselection is up to the CLPs – in other words the people who worked to get serving MPs their majorities. Angela Eagle’s constituency, for example, has chosen to back Corbyn after a democratic vote. If she undermines that vote by standing against him, they are quite within their rights to deselect her next time round as she has fundamentally reneged on her commitment to represent them. There is no centralised ‘purification’ process going on or indeed possible.

HTH.

In any case, as I say, I think what is going on with the Labour party is the least of it. What is much, much more relevant and frightening imo is what is going on behind the scenes in terms of the likes of Banks, Farage, et al, who seem to me to have positioned themselves to pull strings in every sphere of life – political, financial, media-related – to make the UK their own personal tax haven and playground. If we and our politicians don’t wake up to this FAST and slam every conceivable handbrake on, I think there is a real risk we will all end up being nothing more than the new plutocracy’s serfs – a bloodless coup 'without a shot being fired'.

MrsLupo I am fully prepared to laugh myself sick when AE climbs down from her perch again and says she's going to wait.

Oh, and agree re Corbyn and the Remain campaign. He got the highest percentage of voters for Remain than any party, did he not? Yet he's getting trashed, and the others are lauded.

I don't understand the tax credits entry either, Red. I'm assuming it's some sort of tax rebate or allowance, not actual tax credits benefits iyswim?

Oh, I see it's on Twitter now

This reads like it's made for this thread: www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/10/theresa-andrea-tory-leadership-candidates
"Andrea struggled from the off. If just being herself wasn’t a big enough handicap to her own ambitions, having the support of the Tory MP, Tim “Not Even Nice But Still Dim” Loughton and Arron Banks – a man whose sole claim to political legitimacy is being so loaded he has been able to shovel huge amounts of cash towards Nigel Farage and Ukip over the years – on Marr should have sent Andrea into a cold sweat. Loughton just looked miserable as he went through the motions of defending Leadsom’s comments on motherhood, while Banks all but announced plans to merge Ukip with the right wing of the Tory party to create a Thousand Year Nasty Party.£

"Over on Peston, there was Iain Duncan Smith, a man whose credibility has now sunk so low that he was captioned as “Andrea Leadsom Fan” rather than “The Idiot who Introduced Universal Credit while Work and Pensions Secretary”.

"Eagle has been promising to launch a leadership bid “in the next 24 hours” for the past 10 days, but on Peston she was keen to announce that she would definitely be putting herself forward for the Labour leadership the very next day."

" An angry, ranting Corbyn is a fairly harmless creature; a smiling, passive-aggressive Corbyn is a much scarier prospect. This was a Corbyn for post-post-truth politics. A Corbyn that would have been a match for George Smiley. “I think the Labour party is going places,” he said."

"He would not weaken his grip on power. It was almost as if he wanted a fight. He had the support of a few hundred, thousand Labour members and the revolution started there. So what if Labour lost an election or three. Far better to have 100 of the right kind of MPs than 330 who could form a government."

Tax credits on dividends explained here: www.capricaonline.co.uk/guides/dividend-tax-credits-explained/

That is the extent of my knowledge.

Lib Dems got more for Remain. I think the SNP were one percentage point more.

The Lib Dems were the 'pro-Europe' party. They got 70%. You could ask questions of that tbh. Labour didn't get considerably less.

I agree, he didn't 'not deliver' on the referendum.

MrsLupo, believe it or not I really do have very mixed feelings on Corbyn. My comments are the negative ones. I could do a bunch of positive ones for him.

Its an 'on balance' argument in the end.

I think he has been stitched up in many ways, but at the same time I just don't think every Labour MP would be saying what they are if there wasn't a problem in there too. One that isn't just about his ability to win.

There was a tweet by the House of Lords Labour earlier today. Corbyn said he'd done x, y and z on twitter. They responded saying that actually they were a combination of government u turns and things the Lords had blocked (and that there were lots more they were planning to block) and it wasn't something he was responsible for.

I thought that was interesting.

Yes I honestly don't know what Jeremy has done wrong. This pathetic 'coup' was planned months before the Ref vote. A bunch of treacherous snakes. I'm not even a Labour supporter.

MrsLupo I haven't contributed much to these threads (because I don't know as much as you lot), but I do sympathise with corbyn - it's obvious that his MPs have been waiting for an opportunity to get rid of him since he was first elected and as a result I don't believe half of the stuff that is being said about him.

That said, I think the fact that the press and most of his MPs don't support him mean that he can't really function as a leader. I get a vote in the leadership election (through my union membership) and I'm not sure what I would do - it really depends on who stands against him.

I have mixed feeling regarding Corbyn as well. I firmly believe that the MPs were against him from the off, and have acted like sulky children since he was elected, doing everything they could to create problems and division through the party, rather than step up and be adults about it and work for the good of the country. They doomed it before it had even begun.

Well, yes, clearly neither Corbyn nor the Labour party as a whole can function as things are. I can't argue with that. I'm just not sure how the PLP ever thought they could come out of this on top. To me, it's clear that Labour voters want a more left-wing party. Long before Corbyn's leadership was a twinkle in Diane Abbott's eye, that was apparent imo from the 2015 election result. Equally clearly, the PLP don't want a leftist shift. But what would unseating him achieve? Go back to centrist politics and lose yet another election? Because they would, even more heavily than before imo, since all those loony left types like me would never, ever vote for them again, on top of all the votes they lost somewhere between 2005 and 2015. Their only hope of power is to suck it up and get behind him as far as I can see, and actually, at this point, they've done so much damage that's probably not an option anymore anyway. So, well played, all.

I have also really tried to work out what's in all this for Angela Eagle, because as far as I can see she doesn't even want to challenge him, has no hope of winning even a two-handed ass-grabbing contest never mind a party leadership, and looks desperately unhappy and unconvincing. I'm wondering whether anyone's seen Maria Eagle lately, as the only conclusion I can reach is that she's being held at gunpoint by Peter Mandelson in a basement somewhere.

Tax credit on dividend: until this year, there was a 10% tax credit due on all dividends. This meant that anybody paying tax at the basic rate paid no tax on dividends and higher rate tax payers paid 10% less than the basic rate. The reasoning for low dividend tax rates is that company owners already pay corporation tax on profits.

(Can't remember why they didn't just have a lower tax rate to begin with - too much wine at bbq - maybe it will come back to me...)

Anyway companies are now often seen as a way to avoid tax, so the system has changed and the tax credit is no longer available.

Iain Duncan Smith, a man whose credibility has now sunk so low that he was captioned as “Andrea Leadsom Fan”

I noticed that too. Proper made me lol.

(Can't remember why they didn't just have a lower tax rate to begin with - too much wine at bbq - maybe it will come back to me...)

Because it was considered easier to sell a tax credit than a tax cut.

"He doesn't appear to like the UK, its flag, anthem or armed forces"

• That totally disqualifies him to be PM of the UK.

None of us here would be Labour's candidate for PM in an early GE, so it doesn't matter if any of us share some of these opinions.
(in fact I support the flag, anthem & the armed forces - my late dad was career military and fought at Dunkirk. I just hate the cancer of English racism)

"The Labour Party appears the least of our problems"

• yes, because they are irrelevant and politically impotent

Which is UNACCEPTABLE: They have totally failed their duty to the country during this chaos.
They should be hammering the Tories for the dreadful mistakes, for flirting with fascism.

Even if Labour magically paper over their civil war:
Labour under Corbyn will be slaughtered in a GE,^ when 80% of their MPs have voted^ No Confidence in their leader
There's no coming back from that
A totally open goal for the Tory campaign & for Murdoch / Dacre / Banks

How many seats would Labour lose - how many to UKIP, because of JC's obvious distaste for flag & country ?
It might be the GE of the UKIP breakthrough

The reality is that the PLP only accidentally gave Corbyn sufficient nominations in the last leader contest.
He and his supporters realise their type of candidate will not be nominated again by the PLP for the forseeable future.

They don't care about winning GEs.
Their ideology is worth abandoning the poor and vulnerable for the next 10 years, as collateral damage.

Under Corbyn, Labour will remain an ineffective opposition.
Leader of the Opposition should not be a charity post or the Tories & UKIP will Take Their Country Back - to the 1920s

higher rate tax payers paid 10% less than the basic rate

Had a 10% reduction on the higher rate.

THREAD SEVEN HERE

If we get to thread eight, I'm going to have to skip the recap!

History repeats itself, but with a far far worse leader than in 1983.
I remember those 18 years of Tory rule. They totally transformed the country.

Noone is saying return to Blair and neoliberalism.There are electable soft left leadership candidates, if Corbyn would just get out the bloody way.
But if it is Corbyn or bust, then that is the triumph of ideology and stubbornness over the wellbeimg of the poor & vulnerable.

Our post-WW2 social contract won't survive if Tories & UKIP win the next GE.

As far as I'm aware it is not compulsory ( yet) to like the flag or national anthem. I never sing the anthem, it's not mine, I'm Welsh. When I was growing up it was unusual for people to stand up for it too. The flag and anthem rhetoric of the last few years is a product of the right wing, especially the press and in my view is deeply dodgy. Cameron using it as stick to beat Corbyn is typical but doesn't make him right.
I'm not sure the English generally get how much the other nations shy away from it, even those of us who aren't nationalist in our politics.

I agree with you, BigChoc. It occurs to me that the wider public don't yet 'get' what's going on with Labour, and what the stakes are.

There is such a huge movement, organised through social media, to get pro-Corbynites signed up as £3 members. They will ensure Corbyn wins any future leadership contest - and a disaster over the next few years.
I think we need a massive teach-out to those who are going to be the losers in this: to inform; to communicate the urgency; to get them signed up in time to vote for another leader.
It's NOT OK to have a leader who is essentially a go-it-alone individual, who doesn't do day-to-day boring admin. stuff and doesn't see the need to delegate it; who doesn't collaborate or compromise.
It wasn't OK to be so half-hearted about the referendum, whatever his principles. Politics is an art of the present. I look around my bit of London: not affluent; muti-ethnic; migrants. The politics of that moment - this moment - means we were served up on a plate to the far-right. That's so wrong.
That isn't principled, that is poor political judgment and an inability to serve.
I could, I think, let that go BUT there is too much to indicate that Corbyn is just dreadfully sloppy and uninterested in the administrative skills/willingness to delegate administrative duties that someone in charge of a political party MUST have.

If Corbyn was in charge of a bookshop, stock would never get ordered on time, the windows would never get cleaned, the loos would be filthy and none of the staff would be put in charge of those things, either, because it just wouldn't occur to him how important that stuff is. There would, however, be a great deal of discussion about what sort of stock the shop should carry, and how the shop should be selling only the best.

Alas, the shop would close, partly because 'the best' may not really match the ideas of the shoppers it relied on, and partly because of the organisational mess.

I cannot get past Corbyn's unilateral announcement that we should leave the EU immediately, the morning of the result. It just spoke of a complete disengagement with the work, the drudge, of government, and someone flying high and light above any kind of collaborative discussion with others.

I've hoped against hope that he would just resign. I think grass roots organising to get him out needs to be done now.

I think what we know about AL's tax affairs is that she banks at Kleinwort Benson and her children have a trust fund, so her tax return is very unlikely to be a true expression of her wealth.

And she's gone!
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36763208