The Westministenders Hunger Games continues. Hunting for the Opposition.

[RedToothBrush]

THE BREXIT FALLOUT OUT CONTINUES - THREAD EIGHT!

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Each of the parties seem to have a taken a very different style to their leadership contests.

The Tory party have been well documented as doing in the classic style of Hamlet. After the entire Conservative Party have spent two weeks stabbing each in the back and front, May steps forward to take the crown for herself.

But what about the others?

The UKIP leadership contest seems to be in comedy style of Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights. In a strange turn of events, that no one predicted and seem quite absurd, they seem to be changing their rules so their new leader must have been a member for 5 years. The punchline is this rules just about everyone out, apart from Neil Hamilton and Steven Woolfe. As BigChocFrenzy points out, we are expecting Arron Banks to hand out the brown envelopes. We are just waiting for the poorly thought out, and badly booked racist band to turn up and make everyone cringe in horror and distract everyone from UKIP's candidates and their manifestos in the process.

Meanwhile Labour Party decide to do what they thought was Star Wars Panto. After spending a week going “She’s Standing”, “Oh No She’s Not” Angela Eagle is declared the Empire Strikes Back candidate by Diane Abbot. Well if she’s the rebel leader, then who is Darth Vader and the Emperor?

Unfortunately, you’d be forgiven for thinking the performance is starting to look more and more like a re-enactment of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, by the minute:

A battle of wills between two forces locked together in a room with ultimately different and opposing self-interests. This is only resolved when the new leader to the dynamic who sought to upset the institution, and give the others their freedom, is lobotomised and subsequently killed in an act of mercy. His murderer manages to escape the prison to the cheers of those still stuck inside.

The Greens of course are a foreign language film, no one has heard of and no one is really that interested in watching.

The Lib Dems are merely sat in the audience. With Tim Farron heckling.

But where is Gandalf?

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At least some sanity has returned and we now have some leaders. May can now get stuck into the job of handing the nightmare that is Brexit whilst making herself at home at Number 10. Rumours are circulating that it’s been left a bit of a pigsty.

We will follow May, on her new adventures to foreign lands to persuade Merkel and Juncker to hand over a mythical unicorn to the UK. Meanwhile will we continue our own hunt for the opposition, whilst we all consult our dictionaries for the meaning of the word ‘Brexit’ in bafflement in the wake of ‘Brexit means Brexit’.

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Sense of humour compulsory. No experience necessary though

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2682358-The-Westministenders-Media-Baron-Hunger-Games-continues-Is-it-about-to-all-implode?pg=1 Previous thread 7

This article outlines the main groups organising around Corbyn for his last election.

If nothing else, it gives a few of the names and backgrounds of people/groups I guess we're going to hear more of ... maybe.

I thought it was interesting because it

• makes clear there are some radical disjunctions between the groups supporting Corbyn, and the visions they bring along with their support
• it adds depth to the feeling quite a few of us have that Corbyn and supporters are not necessarily terribly interested in Parliamentary power
• rather shines a light on how very un-leaderly Corbyn is (a kind way of putting that might be to describe him as a 'lone wolf')
• offers an explanation for the rather substantial disjunction between the nasty tactics (and aims) of some supporters and the absolute disavowal of this by many others

I was particularly interested in the hints about Momentum groups having a bit of a 'disjunction' between new professional leaders and less experienced leaders/members - but, hey, I'm an old cynic.

I do wonder how it will all pan out.

Fanatical fans project all their fervent desires and hopes onto the object of their worship.

tbh though, JC was so ambivalent towards the referendum that almost anyone can plausibly claim he is on their side wrt that issue

thecat I agree regarding the self - exclusion of certain groups from politics. Who would want to expose themselves to all that?

I'm starting to think that Corbyn is a much of an elitist as those on the right he professes to be against. It's just a different type of elitism.

There is something of the 'Future 2' thing with the Corbyn fans, too, that everything will change if he can just stay in power.

That's where some of them align with the hard Right creative destruction crowd. Bring on the chaos, everyone will be desperate and looking to be saved, and will be only too willing to lap up the ideologically pure Corbyn. Desperate times for many but the end justifies the means.

Just watching Nicola Sturgeon talking on BBC. I applaud her energy.

I would have thought that the obvious candidate to stand would be Hilary Benn, because it was his sacking which brought this mayhem into the open.

It feels like Hilary Benn's sacking happened centuries ago!

cat I've long considered that JC and McDonnell have mastered the art of plausible deniability wrt their associates
Pretty much essential for people who have attended so many IRA and Hamas shindigs

I've never considered either of them "nice" in the least.
iirc I remember noticing JC from shortly after 1983, when he was first elected as an MP.
No, the occasional reports over the last 30+ years of what he has got up to have never suggested "nice" is appropriate.

That link refers to women Labour MPs suffering threats of rape & murder, even threats to their children.
The men, including JC, are suffering a tiny fraction of this.

Extraordinary, that within the Labour Party that there is such a focus on initimidating specifically women.
Even more extraordinary that their leader, idolised by so many, minimises this horror and distracts attention from it, seeking sympathy only for himself.
Yet another failure to meet minimum standards for a leader.

nauticant it's not really surprising that the hard left espouses creative destruction, as the concept is derived from the work of Karl Marx.

flippinada Yes. I think we're seeing a fundamental shift, but ultimately its swapping an old elite for a new one (all done in the name of 'the people') against the background of an economic shift that is going to leave a lot of people a lot further from power than before.

As far as Labour goes, the demonisation of its recent history - all of it - as 'Blairism' (which is now a powerful insult) serves to re-organise public memory (like an act of erasure in political photographs) and as a way of establishing a new elite.

BigChoc Corbyn's 'ambivlanece' over the EU certainly did that.

You know, I've been thinking about grassroots politics. I am totally in favour of more inclusive, grassroots politics (and goodness knows, I've done enough of it over the years) but I think - what with Orgreave coming up in the news - we would be well advised to remember why we should also aim at Parliament.

I get the need to take politics out of Parliamnet and on to the street, homes, working places and leisure places. The UK is, at the moment, quite centre-right at the moment. You can argue that this is because people are disenfrnachised from politics and power to the point that they disengage in a radical way or misrecognise/even collude against their own self-interests.

However, I'm not sure that simply having pop-up events or alternative cabarets in which people take part in Boal-inspired improvisational theatre, or put on art installations in public spaces to highlight the wrongs of globalisation is really enough.

Sure, if you don;t have a credible opposition inside Parliamnet, you can argue that protest will grow on the street, and it will be more radical, more authentic, more awakening. BUT it is worth remembering how Power can respond to that. It is often not at all pleasant. The police force can be politicised to a far greater extent, for a start. Things get very nasty. Orgreave, the Battle of the Beanfield ... small things from our own recent history.

I know I sound like a hopeless reformist but ... daily life became a lot less vile as Labour developed into a powerful Opposition and then into power. One of the reasons Call-me-Dave dragged the Conservatives towards Social Progressiveness was because of the force exerted by Labour's electorability.

I think I am suspicious of the wholesale erasure of any positives of Labour's recent history precisely because it necessarily erases why Parliamentary power can, actually, be a good thing and what the risks are about abandoning that for 'the power of the streets^.

Sure but it's always interesting to see the ways in which the hard Left and hard Right are mirror images of each other.

Totslly agree wrt to mastering art of 'plausible deniability'.

I am genuinely baffled by the adulation of JC. I have friends who think he's great and I just.don't.get.it. I think I need to because - if you can't understand the underpinning, you can't connect, and then undo.

That business insider article is very interesting indeed.

I think the social media dynamic in particular: Facebook (and probably MN) have a very different element in that they allow debate.

Many of my friends were £3 Corbynites - of the moderate kind rather than the crazy one. They want something more left wing and more not doing the whole establishment thing

If my FB is anything to go by though, the tone has changed this week though. As much as they genuinely loved and are fanatic about him, they are now disillusioned by both the PLP and Corbyn.

The trouble is, they are unlikely to cough up £25 because they are disgusted. Whilst not apathetic, the £25 thing favours it all, towards fanatics - not the anti-Corbyn candidate(s). So I think we are going to get a fanatics v core party membership going on. If the core party membership loose, I fear we have lost a generation of good people to our communities. I doubt many will join another new party or the Lib Dems.

It will rip the working class heart out of our country.

DC leaving No10 now.

His youngest looks totally bewildered.

He speech about what he's done sounds like its grasping at straws.

Sam and the children look lovely.

Loved the instructions 'wave........wave'.

The poor kids who are nearly in tears, get shoved into one car whilst mum and dad are in another.

They did that this morning too red on the way out of PMQs. I assume it's some sort of security thing.

www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/off-you-fk-queen-tells-cameron-20160713110670

Daily Mash on the resignation.

I remember crying watching Gordon Brown and his family leave Downing Street. It's a very emotional thing.

I am seriously contemplating leaving Labour and joining Plaid. I just can't make any sense of what's happening.

What a ordeal for the children though. The elder girl looked so upset.

I think I would say to anyone thinking about joining another party from Labour is to wait - at least a few days. Don't make a decision based on emotions. Make one when you've had time to do so with a clear head.

Corbyn Watch @Sean__Clare carrying a video of him speaking to Unite today.

I would say, we now technically are officially leadership by now.