Westminster: Brexit is the hard right's weapon of mass distraction

[BigChocFrenzy]

The fervour and divisions over Brexit have suspended normal party politics.

The staggering incompetence & unsuitability of Corbyn as a leader, together with the resulting impotence of Labour has removed the normal checks & balances in UK politics.
There is a vaccum where the Official Opposition should be, so Theresa May is under pressure only from her right.

I fear Thereas May and the Tory rightwing are taking advantage of Brexit to complete the destruction of the post-WW2 social contract and the welfare state.

Meanwhile, the constraints of civilised discourse have been loosened and those with racist or social Darwinist views now feel free to spout their poison openly.

Putin is pouring petrol on all the fires and Arron Banks is lurking < sinister emoticons required >

Zoe Williams:
"Behind a smokescreen of bogus patriotism, ideologically driven cuts to the NHS and all our public services are unpicking the bonds of nationhood"

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/05/brexit-theresa-may-falklands-war-nhs-cuts

"We should be marching against the crisis in adult social care, the closure of care homes, the systematic exploitation of carers, the £4.6bn cut from social care budgets this decade.
We should be .... asking:

“What exactly is the plan, if we’ve decided we can no longer afford to care for the elderly and the disabled?
What do we do with them instead?”

"We should be marching against cuts in education funding"

"Every morning we wake up to someone on the radio explaining, despairingly, that you can’t fix the hospital bed crisis until social care is fixed, and you can’t fix that until council tax brings in more, and it can’t bring in more because wages are too low."

"But when everything breaks at the same time, that is not a coincidence: it is a plan.

As surely as Margaret Thatcher had an economic plan on employment, rights, industry and wages,
this century’s Conservatives have a plan on public services, which is to smash them beyond all recognition."

whatwouldrondo Sorry, I misunderstood! I'm on edge because of the budget, and the HoL debate last night, and feeling so powerless to stop the madness!

...and vasectomies 😀👍

You are correct - there would be more areas going LibDem but nothing like enough to have any impact

Depends how you define impact. There certainly wouldn't be sufficient to pack a major punch, but the Tories are in a strong position right now with a cowed Labour party not saying boo to a goose. An increase in explicitly pro-EU MPs could prove a big headache for May - she emphatically does not want some kind of Remain Tory, LD, Labour, Sinn Fein, SNP get along gang.

Thus far a co-ordinated Remain fightback is lacking, but that could potentially change.

in memory of the Cousin and mother. Several of my great Aunts were farmed out to spinster aunts (post WW1) because my great grandparents could not afford to feed them all. Multiple births ran in the family so although my great grandmother only had five pregnancies it included triplets and twins. Ironically the children who stayed at home died much younger because of their poor diet (bread and dripping). My Nanas twin lived to 96, she died at 70. We forget that such poverty and the reproductive history is in living memory. It was with good reason my Mother celebrated the emancipation that the pill bought in the 60s and embraced feminism and flower power. My daughter's used to regard feminism as a sad anachronism but one thing about these times is it has made young women realise that none of this progress is to be taken for granted.

Nick Robinson is tweeting that TM is sounding like she is preparing for a GE.....

twitter.com/BBCNews/status/839449980381327360

Anyone got Ken Clark's number? The time could be now

Bring it on. Don't think it's going to happen though.

HoC grandstanding doesn't change the fact that the Tories need to focus all their resources on Brexit negotiations - an election would be a massive distraction.

In the spirit of what I think these threads generally represent, I agree wholeheartedly with whatwouldrondo's post at 11:12 today.

I disagree often with whatwould et al regarding Brexit, yet I find common points of agreement regularly wrt the many other facets of life & values.

We ticked different boxes in the ref, that is one difference between us - there may be more, but there are as many similarities too.

These threads often irritate the hell out of me as they are very Remain centric, however that is also why I keep coming back to them - because I get an insight to the viewpoints of Remainers as well as being directed to links & info etc that I wouldn't find on leave centric threads/sites.
It allows me to keep some balance & objectivity to all things Brexit as well as the myriad other topics that are discussed (NI being a main one where I've learned a lot, as well as the difficulties being experienced by EU citizens within the UK).

Badders

On International Women's Day, we should remember those women and girls who have suffered and died, also those in other countries who are even now suffering slavery and mutilation.

We must ensure that we don't give up the rights here that our mothers and grandmothers fought so hard for.

May will have no scruples about calling a GE if she thinks it is to her benefit and that of her party.
Party loyalists / careerists believe their best interests = those of the country

She has to balance several factors to decide the Tories best chances in probably the next 2 GEs:

• Corbyn / Labour totally non-electable atm
• How long will that last ? - previous Labour & Tory meltdowns suggest 10+ years
• 2018 seat boundaries will give the Tories maybe 20 seats advantage
• When will negative effects of Brexit be hardest ? - the Tories need a few years in hand to ride that out

I suspect Corbyn is being kept in reserve as the Tories secret weapon. The media haven't yet unleashed what they can about him.
He will win the next GE for them - provided he doesn't quit first because of physical or political ill-health.
So she'll be wary of waiting too long

She can win easily without waiting for the 2018 seat boost, but it all depends on when she expects Brexit to bite

She can get round, or even repeal, the Fixed Term Parliament Act
The Lords wouldn't block a govt wanting a GE for a "mandate"

There is also the issue of those election expenses investigations. If she knows there is a likelihood of say six by elections, and all vulnerable to the Lib Dems perhaps she is better going to the country as a whole?

This is interesting. The Border Force who are going to have to implement new trade arrangements appear to be asleep at the wheel but weirdly not asleep last Christmas when they ransomed all my Christmas Gifts from China for a sum total of £100 duty that wasn't due on gifts in any case

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/uk-faces-2bn-fine-over-chinese-imports-scam-say-eu-anti-fraud-investigators

What better way to get around the expenses issue but to make it largely moot.

These threads often irritate the hell out of me as they are very Remain centric

And why shouldn't they be? The internet is swarming with uninformed Leave voters wiffling about taking back control, putting the Great back into Britain - this thread is an oasis of informed Remain discussion. Don't post on it much, but it's a great source of links and debate.

There's the Barmy Arms for people who like to talk Leave with smilies and 'huns'.

whatwouldrondo maybe that's why those DM articles on Sunday mentioned no 10's concern about them.
She should get her majority. Will have to make sure she's got lots of nice leave tories ready to stand.

'about them' the police investigation into election expenses 'problems' in up to 6 tory wards.

Ninon I think semi deserves credit for taking the trouble to read what the opposition think, and for engaging positively (notably on the NI issue).

I'm all in favour of giving shills and racists short shrift, but there are still some leavers who want to discuss brexit issues constructively.

ron that article is more than "interesting" ... It's explosive.

Strong incentive for the EU to insist on hard borders there! it's a spanner in the works of a soft brexit surely?

I would say there's an obvious reason why this thread is remain centric.

Misti I am not sure £3.2 bn VAT receipts I'd going to swing the negotiations compared to the £45-60 bn up for grabs on the UK debt to the EU, the barriers to the £500bn of trade and the four principles but it ought certainly to be a worry to May that the Border Agency are ready and able to cope if we jump off that cliff.....

I think we should do our best to ignore the schills and not even engage with them.

Not always easy though as they constantly change names sometimes could be genuine new posters and as a norm, on these threads we have always tried to engage constructively with whoever posts and we have often diverged from purely Brexit topics to often related topics such as Trump, education, the NHS, history, Scottish independence, Irish re-unification.....because Brexit could and will have wide ranging ramifications and in this era of globalisation there are domino effects - some good, some bad.

But their masks usually slip eventually

I have no issue with Semi or Leave voters posting here (obvious trolls aside), but I don't see that the thread being predominantly Remain in outlook is a problem.

This thread is for remainers and those genuinely interested in our views

If we wanted leave opinions we would hang out in the brexit arms

Pretty simple really

I think Richard Herring should be told that we've had a "when is international men's day" moment on Mumsnet