Westministenders: Johnson defends his President whilst we try to defend Britain

[RedToothBrush]

Theresa and Donald
Sitting in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First come Brexit
Then comes the Ban
Then comes the
Removal of Human Rights
… Damn

(Shamelessly stolen from a protest sign)

A couple of weeks ago people were still asking why we were talking about Trump on a Brexit thread. I think the answer has made itself all together too apparent.

What is happening in the US is not going to stop. It’s not going to get any better any time soon. The situation is grave with suggestions there has been a coup. What happens next is not going to be pretty. American institutions are struggling. The rule of law has been undermined. We are not talking about a developing country. We are talking about the country which has stood for freedom and democracy.

Our leadership looks weak in the face of this. We look like we are not only appeasing but endorsing. For what? A trade deal that he could revoke in 30 days?

We have but one question. How many of our ‘British Values’ will have to be sacrifice for the special relationship?

Make no bones about this: Cosying up to Trump threatens our national security. It threatens our democracy. It ruins what little moral authority we have left. It threatens our ties with Europe who we DO still need to have a relationship even if we are outside the EU. This is not world leadership. This is appeasement. This is cowardly weak and downright desperate.

Let us also not forget ‘Good old Boris’ pretending to be Churchill and calling the EU Nazis and Hitler during the Referendum and on several occasions since. He has now had the bare faced audicity to stand in the House of Commons and call MPs out repeatedly for ‘trivalising the holocaust’ or for making comparisons with the 1930s when they saying they have been told this by survivors of the holocaust. It is SHAMEFUL. I also note how many times Johnson referred to Trump being democratically elected as if this makes all the difference and he can’t possibly be a dictator if elected.

Why do they want to use the parallel themselves and HATE it when its used for things they use? Fascists hate being pointed out as fascists.

What would happen if you put it to the public? You have a choice, The EU or Trump? What would they say. At its most basic this is what Brexit is now. You can not hide it or disguise it any longer.

Get used to this. Be prepared to protest, to keep challenging, to keep calling things as they are. Fatigue might set in, but we need to keep on. This is for the long haul.

Today the a50 Bill starts in parliament. It’s not looking good, as it looks like MPs will completely fail in their DUTY to hold the government to account and will not have the balls to add amendments to the bill.

If it passes without any, get worried. It is not just about the EU.

It never was.

I've posted this before I think but why not again...Trump has already asked why he shouldn't have Iraq's oil...he has already had his adventure in Yemen, that was easy, wasn't it?...and he has nuclear weapons. So why not let Putin have Syria and a nice Mediterranean port or two, threaten Bhagdad with a missile, walk in and take the oil? If I can think of it I'm sure he can.

"They have everything to play for if the position themselves as repairers of the social fabric."

And that's all Banks' proposed party needs to say it is to get Labour's working class vote. Much like the SNP rebranded itself. Labour came to power because of Blair - he bridged that gap between old Labour voters and soft Tories. And, palatable or not, it's the soft Tories that Labour needs to ever get power again (especially with the boundary changes). I simply cannot see where they can go at the moment. And the Tories know that as well.

Labour have been destroyed by lies about 'Bliar' from tory press and infiltration by Trots

The Labour party, but not the left, centre-left.

Corbyn did some sterling work last night: Corbyn 'choose to be gay' gaffe

And compared to the lies & folly of Brexit plus Trump - Blair is soon going to look like small fry.

Part of the reason that non-Corbynites have given for not splitting is that they will lose the historical association with the Labour party.

But to be honest, that soon will be a bit of a liability anyway.

Long term they won't have much to lose.

SwedishEdith completely agree with your post.

Is a sdp type splinter party a possibility for labour?

Won't demographics make a difference at the next GE and the one after that?

What is the age profile of the Tory vote? Not to put too fine a point on it, how many of them will have died by then?

And although it is axiomatic that a good proportion of people become more conservative (small c) as they get older, how many of the currently middle-aged are going to feel well enough off to vote Tory?

The Lib dems are going a hood job st opposing at the moment as are the snp. I don't think the present incarnation of labour will survive - it has always been two rather uncomfortably joined parties and I think the distinction will be clear. The middle lot will probably join up with the lib dems or similar leaving hard left and hard right.

Given demographic changes as well, I think the tories will struggle to win in 2025. Hopefully 2020 but I think that election victory is a total poison chalice.

May won't last more than 2 years whatever. The Tories will get in 2020 but already the economic downturn, inflation, job losses, fall in living stands, will be having an impact.

No, I don't think she will last. But remember when Major got in, first we had John Smith as a Labour leader, who looked like a PM in waiting - so it fed the idea that Labour could be electable. Sadly, he died prematurely, but then Blair came along. Blair maintained tight discipline to make sure they got elected. Although I think Major was a much better PM than May he looked weak (think of how Spitting Image portrayed him as being grey) and May's pig-headedness is being mistaken for strength. I am not sure yet whether Starmer looks like a PM in waiting - possibly, but I think a bit more work is required. The Tory knives need more sharpening too. I don't think it matters that there is no obvious successor - Major came from nowhere, and the favourites fell by the wayside.

Then again, there are always the unknown unknowns which come along out of the blue to trip us all up.

Conservative party membership - 61% over 60, plus 22% aged between 40 and 60.

A fairly significant number of these will be old style county tories who are small-c. Conservative but therefore reasonably content with NHS, single market etc.

Swedish I would not even attempt to predict what will happen in the UK in the next five years because I think we are in for a series of shocks globally and that will determine to a large extent what happens here. Underlying all is also unknowable of how the technological revolution will play out, few living in 1800 understood how the machines being used in the homes of weavers in the valleys of the north of England were going to change society and the world order. Upthread there was a link to Baldwin's analysis that the world is in the process of a great convergence, reversing the process started by the industrial Revolution, the great divergence, which saw wealth concentrated on the developed nations*. We are already at 1900 as far as that reverse is concerned and it only started in the 1990s I would put a bet that the trend for the world's wealth to flow East from the developed western economies will be accelerated by the policies, Brexit / Trump, that are the understandable knee-jerk reaction to globalisation because as he highlights wealth now flows from the trade in knowledge what I do not things. Our young people understand that better than we do, and certainly better than most Brexit voters. Ironically there was a good piece on this on that most twentieth century of technologies and institutions Radio 4 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08c0rm2

*Between 1820 and 1990, the share of world income going to today’s wealthy nations soared from twenty percent to almost seventy. Since then, that share has plummeted to where it was in 1900. As Richard Baldwin explains, this reversal of fortune reflects a new age of globalization that is drastically different from the old.

In the 1800s, globalization leaped forward when steam power and international peace lowered the costs of moving goods across borders. This triggered a self-fueling cycle of industrial agglomeration and growth that propelled today’s rich nations to dominance. That was the Great Divergence. The new globalization is driven by information technology, which has radically reduced the cost of moving ideas across borders. This has made it practical for multinational firms to move labor-intensive work to developing nations. But to keep the whole manufacturing process in sync, the firms also shipped their marketing, managerial, and technical know-how abroad along with the offshored jobs. The new possibility of combining high tech with low wages propelled the rapid industrialization of a handful of developing nations, the simultaneous deindustrialization of developed nations, and a commodity supercycle that is only now petering out. The result is today’s Great Convergence.

Because globalization is now driven by fast-paced technological change and the fragmentation of production, its impact is more sudden, more selective, more unpredictable, and more uncontrollable. As The Great Convergence shows, the new globalization presents rich and developing nations alike with unprecedented policy challenges in their efforts to maintain reliable growth and social cohesion.

Anyone else think the smell of chips cooking coming from the Brexit Pub is getting really annoying......

I never go near the Brexit pub. One time I walked past and they were drinking themselves under the table, and I had no desire to join them.

I really don't believe much effort has gone into ""[maintaing] social cohesion".

Not a few high-powered commentators have tried to get governments and plutocrats to recognise the necessity of spreading the bread and circuses a little more generously, even at gatherings like Davos, and the governments and plutocrats haven't taken much notice.

I'm not sure how much you can read into party membership. Labour got fewer votes in Richmond than there were members (yes, a particular situation so lots of tactical voting, I assume). Maybe lots more of us will become floating voters - and I'm not sure that's a bad thing. MPs will have to earn their vote - but, we could be back into unicorn land again...

I steer well clear too ron though I'm chuckling away because, being the traitor I am, I did have Mediterranean veg tonight

I am not sure yet whether Starmer looks like a PM in waiting - possibly, but I think a bit more work is required

What's needed is 3 or 4 strong people who can work together to unite a party/cross-parties. Starmer on his own can't do much.

Badders123 I'd hoped for that, with Lammy, Clegg, Cooper, wee Tim, and it was mooted that there was going to be a remain kickback now with Branson funding it. But that seems to have faded away.

Pattypenguin there are plenty of children and teens being groomed right now by the alt right, there's a data harvesting organisation called Cambridge Analytica which helped UKIP and the GOP target with unusual news or lies, we used to call it. The demographic won't swing us back to liberalism.

ron there is no communist opposition model to this ferocious capitalism. No one holds up socialism as a trusted model in Europe since the fall of USSR. Except, interestingly, the US, the support for a socialist candidate Bernie, was bigly unpresidented as they say on another thread. And strangely at a time when there was such a rise in the popularity of socialism in America, inexplicably an orange person who speaks very little English was made president, despite a number of factors including not winning the popular vote( I know, he still won).

But if you look at the number of Labour MPs just packing it in right now. And how they voted yesterday. It's a toxic job. Look at what some posters were saying last night. What used to be illegal to say and do is now tolerated. Who would want a job having to put into practice some views which are very much out there right now. And keep a country safe and solvent?

May knows there's no opposition, and like a good politician, she is going to capitalise on weakness, until it's her turn to be prey.

This is why the custom and practice of separation of powers are so key. If there's not equal play between legislature, judiciary and executive, the executive will win, brutally.

Agree with your post ron.

Woman I would not pigeonhole Bernie Sanders as a Socialist in the way we understand it in the UK. He speaks out against corporate America but because corporate America has got away with so much more than corporate UK did / would have done. even under Conservative governments, though I hate to think that will change. Politicians like Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, and Obama come to that, speak out for liberal values, and equality, but that is the direction in which they want to turn the supertanker, they do not want to sink it. Traditional Republicans share a lot of those values too but place more emphasis on self reliance / working hard to achieve the American dream etc. but most importantly also believe that with success comes responsibility and they take part in Civil Society / Philanthropy to a far greater extent than we do here. It is not a model I agree with but I do respect it, as those Republicans I know put their money where their mouth is, massively. That is why they voted for Obama, he united everyone behind those common "American values" and why they did not vote for Trump. There is a lot less water between American "socialists" and Republican than between British Socialists and Conservatives. Trump is not a traditional Republican though some of them think they have the tiger by the tail. As we have discussed he is the frontman for what is in reality a nationalist populist right wing movement.

I lived in San Francisco in the 80s and I remember being shocked, even coming from Thatcher's Britain, by Feinstein's narrow mindedness and isolationism (as in the bay area not even America). Now she is one of the good guys www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/

Fair enough ron , just US friends seem to post a lot about Scandinavian social democracy enviously on FB! Still, compared to even Bill Clinton, Bernie was advocating quite lefty things, but take your point.

Another 'follow the money story'
Liam Fox and 'The Atlantic Bridge" organisation linked to guess who!
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/02/corporate-dark-money-power-atlantic-lobbyists-brexit
By tying our fortunes to those of the United States, the UK government binds us into this system. This is part of what Brexit was about: European laws protecting the public interest were portrayed by Conservative Eurosceptics as intolerable intrusions on corporate freedom. Taking back control from Europe means closer integration with the US. The transatlantic special relationship is a special relationship between political and corporate power. That power is cemented by the networks Liam Fox helped to develop
and remember:.
In April 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt sent the US Congress the following warning: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.” It is a warning we would do well to remember.

there are plenty of children and teens being groomed right now by the alt right

Unfortunately that's my experience too...

Thanks for that link, woman. A depressing but important read.

Yes, eye-opening article.