Westminstenders Continues. Boris is having a bad week. Corbyn resists. Its gonna be a long summer.

[RedToothBrush]

THE BREXIT FALLOUT CONTINUES - THREAD ELEVEN

The dust is beginning to settle and the storm has abated. At least for the moment. The summer is about to start, and so there may be a break in proceeding.

May has had quite a first week both here and abroad.

The ground has not stopped shaking from the political ripples abroad. Made PM on Weds, Nice on Thursday and a failed coup in Turkey on Friday. The political landscape has changed once again.

At home she first cleared out the Govians and called for loyalty. She channelled the ghost of Maggie at the despatch box. She started the process of trying to make friends with Scots, Germans and the French. She is apparently now Merkel's bestie. Sturgeon is already ousted from that position after just days.

Boris, meanwhile has been rinsed by everyone he speaks to because of what he's said in the past. He's also given up his chickfeed job. Oh the hardship.

Now he looking like he's starting to regret deciding to play with the grown up. He's been trying - and it would seem, largely failing - at sucking up to the Americans. There's still no apology, but he has admitted that he has a list that is so long that he's lost track of what he needs to apologise for. I bet he's wishing for his playmates, Dave and George to come back.

Otherwise life carries on as normal, well this alternate new version of normal, with parliament breaking for the summer today. Don't worry the Martian landing is scheduled for a week Tuesday.

UKIP's polling seems to have dropped back post referendum, and things have gone rather quiet. Wolfe, Etheridge, Duffy and Arnott are all standing (Who? When did that happen? Yeah quite. Without Farage they disappeared). They plan to reform and make an assault on seats in the Labour heartlands of the provisional NW, Midlands and NE at the next general election. Hustings in August, new leader announced Sept 15th. Looks of thinly and not so thinly veiled racism to look forward to there then. The Daily Mail best make sure it upgrades its servers in time.

The Labour contest grinds on like a war of attrition. Stalking horse Angela fell at the first fence as Owen Smith (that's the MP not the journalist everyone including the media!) wins the dream unity candidate ticket for an apparent hiding to nothing against the steely stubbornness of Corbyn. Everyone with a pulse is starting to loose the will to live with it all.

The Lib Dems, have a Spokesman for Remain. Old Cleggy's back! Otherwise they seem to have been trying to do a deluded impression of the opposition party. Though with 8 MPs they aren't doing much better or worse than Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet atm.

The Green are having a leadership battle too. It must be very civilised - I've heard not a word about it. Lucas tried to get a vote about PR though the Commons. It failed. Again.

There also is a cross party idea to set up a new iniative of a progressive movement to champion Europe, which seems to be gaining some traction. It may also double as a support group for anyone who thinks the world has gone a bit nuts lately at this rate.

The SNP are pissed off, as they vow differently on everything and once again they feel that Trident has been imposed on them. Sturgeon had a good meeting with May though, and apparently the Union must remain and Scotland holds the key to the future. Though we don't know the key to which door that is - Braveheart or Brave New World.

The Republic of Ireland is making noises about a referendum about Irish Unity, but beyond that nothing about NI has really been on the radar. May is supposed to go visiting soon.

And the Welsh? Baaaaa who cares about the welsh? They made the mistake of voting Leave as well as the English and now have been forgotten, consigned to political irrelevance forever.

Article 50 has been pushed back officially until the New Year, with a first legal hearing on how to activate it due no sooner than the 3rd week in October. Leaving the EU legally will now be no earlier than 2019.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2685902-Westminstenders-Contines-Boris-outmaneovered-everyone-Now-War-and-Peace?pg=1 Previous Thread TEN

legal names

what the

Bathroom An interesting game. What TV shows do politicians base their philosophy on? I think Boris must watch a lot of It's a Knockout and think those type of stunts are the way to be popular.

Sorry, I know the thread has moved on since the Putin discussion (I'm just catching up after being away for a few days), but if you want to know more about Putin I recommend this book:

www.amazon.co.uk/Man-without-Face-Unlikely-Vladimir/dp/1847084230

chalala you mean you don't have those posters in your town? we've got loads of them here. Although and are really the only possible reactions. You can have some amazing conversations with people who buy into this shit (my brother...), the twisted logic is hilarious.

dr I think Gove probably thought House of Cards was a documentary, and Loathsome is probably still watching The Good Life. TM looks like she watches a lot of BBC 4, Liam Fox strikes me as Channel 5 all the way.

Castle. Another show that went on way too long. It was good before they started making Kate the stupid one. Trump would never have watched the early shows when Kate was the brains!

More on Clegg.
www.libdems.org.uk/clegg_no_easy_options_on_single_market_access
Background to what he's doing.
Over the coming months Nick will be working with a range of experts, to set out the difficult questions the Government has to answer in a host of areas that will be affected by Brexit. He will publish a series of papers detailing the challenges and dilemmas facing the UK in a wide range of areas, not only on our trading relationship with the EU but also freedom of movement, policing and anti-terror co-operation, agriculture, university research funding, environmental standards and many other areas.

The experts Nick is working with include:

Dr Heather Grabbe, Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute
Anthony Cary CMG, former Head of Chris Patten's cabinet at the European Commission
Professor Dame Helen Wallace
Andy LeBrecht, former UK Deputy Permanent Representative to the EU
Sir Robert Cooper KCMG MVO, former adviser to Javier Solana and Catherine Ashton

The first paper is here
d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/pages/12502/attachments/original/1469629297/Access_to_the_Single_Market.pdf?1469629297

btw, Merkel gets rather unfair criticism, especially in the USA, which comes from 20-20 hindsight and ignorance.

Unlike the UK, Germans were originally quite keen on accepting large numbers of refugees - they really didn't have the instinctive nimby / full-up reaction there would have been in the UK to those numbers.
Many folk thought it was a clever solution to the quite scary demographics problem, mutually beneficial.

So many Germans went to meet the refugees with gifts and offers of accommodation, as they arrived at the train stations.
So many schemes in towns to sponsor & help "their" group of refugees
It was quite inspiring and lovely to see.

It all went pear-shaped after Cologne, which opened the floodgates to reports of assaults from around the country, which hadn't really been put together before.
The recent attacks, both by recent immigrants and those born here, has made Germans really scared and dubious about integration in general.

So sad. Good intentions, but rather naive to start by inviting such numbers, without seeing how it went first.

Unfortunately, it has made some very successful immigrants feel insecure, e.g. some Morroccan friends I know, from work and gym, are anxious that attitudes towards them may change too.
So unfair, because they are all secular, very respectful of German culture.
They are all invited professional or skilled workers, self-supporting, paying tax etc.

It is really important we stand up for those immigrants invited to work here years ago, who have integrated so well.
And to say that in any culture or country torn by war, large numbers of young males left unsocialised and uneducated would act very differently to those who have had much better chances in life.

Not that we should invite refugees when it endangers our safety, but just to understand what made them act this way.

TheBathroomSink nope I'd never heard of this before. There's clearly no end to the weirdness of summer 2016.

Then you are in for a treat Chalalala, this stuff is comedy gold.

Chalala these sort of themes have been around for a while, the 'Freemen on the land' has been a thing in the US for ages, but it has taken full advantage of the internet to spread in new and 'wonderful' ways. It tends to go along with conspiracy theories about black helicopters (which are always government spies). It has also come up quite often in connection with militia-type groups in the US, usually as a reason for stockpiles of weapons or drugs, and in an attempt to keep the FBI or ATF off their property.

well that made my usual afternoon MN procrastination worth it

I thought this sort of stuff only existed in Montana or Texas

if it's now a thing even in the UK, we're fucked. Trump will win and take over the world.

You can lose days reading this stuff. The rationalwiki linked in that other MN thread is genius, and does reference the Montana Freemen. The idea that there's 30000 of these people in Canada, though!! I thought Canada was a refuge of normality.

I'm with you on that. Although I love the comedy value in it, it unsettles me profoundly.

For some reason, the early part of the 21st century is characterised by increasing groups of people thinking that what they want to believe can trump objective reality if their want is sufficiently strong. It's all part of this post-fact reality that is taking over. It seems odd that after several hundred years people are turning away from ideas of the Enlightenment.

Hey I like BBC4. (On iplayer) I'm also very fond of Hey Duggee and Hollyoaks.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/29/a-bright-future-awaits-britain-post-brexit-in-the-commonwealth-m/
Don't worry the future is bright.

www.progressonline.org.uk/2016/07/29/details-matter/
An interesting perspective on Clinton's campaign strategy. She did throw down the gauntlet a little bit by saying that a man who can be baited by a tweet should not have nuclear weapons, only for him to say about hitting democrats today. Again this is good, as it makes her rather than him, look like they are leading and controlling the narrative which is what he constantly tries to do.

Its also interesting to note that the Russia candidate has said nothing about Michelle Obama. Nothing. Not. One. Thing.

Which is quite incredible when you consider what he has said and about whom. He needs the votes of women. He's dehumanised Hillary, because of her political career. Why hasn't he attacked Michelle?

Canada is massive - and empty. I suspect FOTL types live in the emptier bits. But, agree that the rise of Truther types is a big problem. Well, they've always been there but social media is making it easier to grow.

It's the post-truth "logic", and it's also this huge paranoia of government

I caught glimpses of it on MN during the referendum debate, the prospect of an EU army really brought out the conspiracy theories. Some posters were sounding exactly like those Texan nutjobs who believe that any US army exercise within 100 miles of them is a cover-up preparing a federal invasion and military coup

Ukip are attempting to reach Labour levels of wtf-ery in their leadership campaign (yes, it is still going on) with a vetting panel set up for this Sunday to look at the candidates and presumably resolve the Woolfe issue here - although they seem to have bypassed the party's NEC, who would normally deal with this.

We also seem to have missed a particularly delightful candidate, the West Midlands MEP Bill Etheridge, who is campaigning with a pledge to charge prisoners £40k a year for the privilege of being in prison, have a referendum on the death penalty, reclaim our fisheries, lower the price of beer and bring back smoking in pubs, oh, and bring back coal mining on a large scale.

And no, none of those are things I just made up. Not even the mining thing.

Been out all day so not read all the links, but going back to the question of why not seek to defend the views of the 48% more I think the latest polling on Scottish Indyref2 is interesting.

www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/politics/scottish-politics/228938/new-poll-third-scots-want-see-brexit-deal-second-independence-referendum/

17% never want another referendum
25% do not want a referendum before 2030
33% would want to see the Brexit deal before voting in a referendum
9% have no particular view
only 16% want a referendum ASAP

Even in Remain Scotland, despite all the bluster, there seems to be tacit acceptance of Brexit and pressure to get on with reaching as good a deal as possible.

post-truth = Truthiness

wrt ignoring the 48%, for me it is not about revisiting the Brexit decisions - that's finished - but saying that the narrow margin should mean soft EEA Brexit as the preferred option, not hard WTO Brexit.

Hillary scares me more than Trump!

My memorable quote from Hillary last night:

"America is Great because America is Good".

In a nutshell everything that has been wrong with America's psyche as regards Foreign policy for the whole 20 + years Hillary has been around.

The last decade or so, the USA has spawned an amazing number of fact-free conspiracy theories.
Most spring from the unhealthy combination of batshit religion and batshit off-the-edge-of-the-world rightwing politics

They think people should be able to vote on scientific laws - like Newton's - just like on other invented laws
Unfortunately, this infection has spread to other countries.

Symptoms:

• inventing your own facts if you don't like the scientific ones
• don't listen to experts, because their facts conflict with the ones you prefer

Re Indyref2, I don't think the SNP Government would be either surprised or disappointed at those percentages. I don't think they would be wanting to hold a referendum anyway until they were clear about what Brexit involves - in which case (taking the "no particular view" out of consideration), there is a majority for another referendum within the next few years.

Subtle difference (and it depends on exactly how the questions in the survey were worded), but while I would like another referendum, I only want one when there is a good chance of success - and in the current circumstances, that means once the implications of Brexit and Scotland's prospects in the EU are clearer (or as clear as they're ever going to be ).

The difficulty the Scottish Government will have is keeping a lid on the 16% who want another referendum now.

They think people should be able to vote on scientific laws - like Newton's - just like on other invented laws

I want to , but actually...

Hillary scares me more than Trump

Depends what you're afraid of I guess... If I were a black American male, or any minority really, I'd be shitting my pants at the prospect of a Trump presidency

In terms of foreign policy, Hillary is arguably more likely to get involved in yet another war. But Trump is definitely more likely to destroy civilisation because Kim Jong Un sent a mean tweet about his tiny hands. Or something.

I think that this new rejection of Enlightment, has a lot to do with rejection of the conventions of boundaries and how society has been controlled for the last century and beyond which are starting to stack up and haven't been resolved.

(What is it that Gove believes in? Tearing everything down radically and starting again from scratch? There is possibly an element of truth in this if things are allowed to stagnant as society by its nature tends to be resistant to change. Don't worry, I'm not subscribing to Cummings but I think that we are struggling to adapt systems and structures that don't fit to the modern patterns of life quickly enough to meet demand as we are poor at long term planning. Personally I think this is more of a management issue - bringing along people, to support you in change is one of the fundamental pillars of good management. Doing things like not appearing to listen and imposing things are regarded as big no nos. This is also why dictators tend to be better at getting things down as they don't have this need to 'bring people along' in the same way. Obviously the cost to this is basic humanity and liberty).

Again it goes back to the idea that globalisation and sharing of ideas has broken down the barriers and walls that existed and there is a compelling need for society to rebuild social structures in that growing insecurity.

This extreme reaction of rejecting science and experts is part of that, as people look for other structures as an alternative to the economic and political ones we currently have. Its going in multiple directions some of them good, some of them not so good. It very much is 'The Age of Uncertainty'. This is why dictatorial figures will thrive at the moment, as they provide that strong hand of certainty where it is lacking elsewhere.

Its the whole thing is essentially about the 1%. Which is both domestic and global in nature and rejecting it.

indy100.independent.co.uk/article/a-map-of-where-in-the-world-the-richest-one-per-cent-come-from--bkqXTfLKIZ?utm_source=indy&utm_medium=top5&utm_campaign=i100
The independent has a map today about where the 1% live and how that is has changed, stating that While 79 per cent of the global one per cent are citizens of advanced economies, the share is only diminishing, as this is 7-11 percentage points lower than between 1988-2005 with developing nations stating to catch up.

Stephen Hawking touched on it in this article yesterday.

Robert Fisk talked about in this article from November last year.
Fisk noted that Thus the Arab revolutions that consumed the Middle East in 2011 – forget the “Arab Spring”, a creature of Hollywood origin – did not demand democracy. The posters on the streets of Cairo and Tunis and Damascus and Yemen called for dignity and justice, two commodities that we had definitely not sought for the Arabs.

Brexit was about rejecting borders coming down and harking back to an age where those borders and the empire existed.

Leave voted were an odd alliance of those who benefitted most from the old structure of capitalism - the neoliberals - who wanted to strike out and maintain that in the world, the disenfranchised - many traditional Labour voters - from democracy and those who find the idea of global borders and technology coming an assault and threat to their very identity and worth - the racists, the Kippers and older people.

This is a global revolution that rejects the notion of 'old masters and slaves' and seeks new purpose and identity and a sense of 'equality' (even when this is done by oppressing others in the process).

What's happening politically here in the UK, is the same thing. Ideological purity and following a cult figure, is about clinging and belonging to a group, because people don't feel valued or comfortable outside that group.

Getting 'revenge' or acting in anger or spite has been a huge theme. Ironically there are even al-Qaida figures have said that it was about being spiteful and rather than wanting to nation build ISIS are/were about creating chaos and 'wanting action' immediately rather than the graft and hardwork of bringing about a meaningful legitimate alternative.

Therein lies your problem for it all. How do you make all citizens feel valued and part of society, as democracy is being seen increasingly to have ultimately failed? A tiny percentage of the world has 'succeeded' in the pursuit of capitalism as the driving force of society, the American dream has proved to be a lie, the liberal values of Europe a myth to those who come from outside and the promise of socialism from Labour led by Blair shattered by a war and mounting debt for the government and majority in pursuit of popularism over society as a whole. It has only merely allowed a tiny number to excel on the backs of the rest of the world.

Falling back on 'shared belief' therefore isn't a huge surprise as its another form of structure as power vacuums form in areas where no one else is listening or valuing those that exist in them. Someone offers a simplistic and easy solution and people flock to it, rather than giving it real critical thought because it offers some sort of hope and security that established thoughts don't appear to have delivered and people don't feel they can identify with.

Funnily enough, as communities have broken down in the real world, alternative communities have sprung up online which have embraced this breaking down of barriers and its youth rather than older people who have tended value this and are less adverse to the principle and concept of 'globalisation'.

I am rambling a bit here I know, but I do think its all very much intertwined and linked together. Its just trying to articulate that, and pull it all together into a meaningful point that's difficult.

Speaking about Newton, and conspiracy type theories, Newton despite being the scientist he was, also studied religion and made a prediction about the end of the world. He said that:
"About the time of the end, a body of men will be raised up who will turn their attention to the Prophecies, and insist upon their literal interpretation, in the midst of much clamor and opposition."
I think that is more wisdom than prophesy though.
More worryingly he credited with 'foreseeing the creation of Israel'. He also studied the Bible and calculated that the end of the world would be 2060. I think we should ignore this last bit - although he himself suggested that prophecies tended to be a human self fulfilling thing rather than a real foresight of the future.

In OTHER news:
europe.newsweek.com/why-putin-orders-mass-reshuffle-government-rivals-fsb-485388?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter&utm_term=Autofeed#link_time=1469808753
Putin has had a reshuffle too. He's got an election coming up.
Despite Putin’s statement last month assuring Russians that the country has practically recovered from the recession that hit at the end of 2014, 82 percent of Russians beg to differ. Meanwhile, 42 percent of Russians believe corrupt officials are rampantly changing policy to favor themselves personally. Corruption and the economy are issues Putin and his Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will want to show they are serious about ahead of the September vote.
He's got problems. Some of which sound a teeny bit familiar...

Apparently TM told Hollande last week (and reconfirmed by phone on Wednesday) that she would review the Hinkley decision but no-one told EDF anything.

There's also a handy video summary of the whole Hinkley situation on the FT, with the added bonus of the lovely Kiran Stacey here