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."

Yes Misti

I've noticed that too

If I didn't know better I'd say we were being haunted by the ghost of claig 😂

Hashi...race attacks up, hate speech increased...but, no. We are "imagining" it

🙄

"But - as I've said before - you share a platform with those that DO
I judge people not just by their actions, but the company they keep."

Collective labeling as racists. Wonderful.

Your honour, I know we killed 10 people, but they killed 15 so we should get away with it

Comfort That is like when my children used to say "but she was meaner". No excuse, and a sign of the growing intolerance and decline in humanitarianism in the country. My Tory MP voted with her conscience in favour of humanitarianism and has helped with the settlement and integration of Syrian refugees in our borough. What I wonder would a May government have done for Ugandan and Kenyan Asians? Or the Tamils who fled Sri Lanka? I know several families who have prospered in the UK after losing everything and now contributing more than their share to the economy and to society.

Badders123

But - as I've said before - you share a platform with those that DO

I judge people not just by their actions, but the company they keep.

That's something called "collective guilt", usually more associated with the authoritarian right than liberalism. Can you imagine trying to tar any other group in society with the same brush because of "the company they keep"?

"Something has really, really got up someone's nose in the last week."

Collective labeing as racists

They're really worried about something, aren't they?

What I wonder? Genuine question. I can't see how the HOL decision was big enough to warrant the last few days? I don't think anyone is under the illusion that A50 is not going to happen. So why?

They are the illiberal left

Misti Or some funding is flowing again....

Did you all read to the end of the Gina Miller story?

It's pretty fucking scary, but at the same time there was a snippet at the end of the report which is one of those "only in Britain, and only at this precise time in history" moments:

Rhodri Philipps is also known as the 4th Viscount St Davids and holds the titles Lord Strange of Knockin, Lord Hungerford, and Lord de Moleyns

Here, folks, we have a viscount and Lord who lives in Knightsbridge, battling the "global elites" on behalf of the common man - by threatening a black woman immigrant with violence.

You couldn't make it up (did I accidentally click on a link to the Onion?)

Given how poor rtb just wants a day or two's break and how our conversation is being filled up with the same tripe, is anyone ready to prepare the next thread?

comfort The EU is not one country.
Orban is odious, but hey he is the darling of the Daily Mail. He is one of the few friendly EU leaders according to the government. He is our friend and ally now. [hangs her head in shame]

I always said we should abolish the lords

There has been discussion for years about using Article 7 to suspend E European countries with far right racist govts.
Unfortunately, despite what many Leavers think, the EU has very limited power over what member govts do when it isn't to EU citizens.

Allowing countries to join who have spent decades under communist or fascist govt was always a huge risk.
Dictatorship usually wrecks the social, political and economic fabric of a country for many decades after the dictators have gone
The EU has no magic for that, nut neither does anyone else.

e.g. the EU cannot stop the UK govt cutting welfare budgets - even though iirc the UN castigated the UK a few years ago.

The EU could not stop the UK joining the US war against Iraq, which destablised the whole Middle East and created the refugee crisis

Here, folks, we have a viscount and Lord who lives in Knightsbridge, battling the "global elites" on behalf of the common man - by threatening a black woman immigrant with violence.

Yep it needs to be abolished...

No doubt this is why Theresa May was making speeches in Scotland - she doesn't want to be seen to be the one who broke the UK.

It reminds me of Queen Mary "When I die and am cut open they will find Philip and Calais inscribed on my heart"

Will there be room for Johnson, Davis and Fox, Brexit, Northern Ireland and Scotland.....

Badders So you are back to the guilt by association line of argument again? It's not a very sophisticated line of thought is it? And it's logically nonsense.

And talking of logic, how does it work for pp to say, "It's a straw man to say that anyone is saying all leave voters are racists" but then to say "Okay, you may not be racist but you "share a platform* (whatever that means in this context) so you share their racist guilt" How does that work, logically? It's a bit having cake and eating it, isn't it?

I agree wrong trouser

Last time there was a move to abolish the Lords, in 2010, the Tories opposed it.

I'm in favour of replacing it with a directly elected upper chamber, not on the grounds of how it votes, but because it's an anachronism in a modern democracy.

The Leavers who post about the fascist former Warsaw Pact countries strangely are those who usually rejoice about the rise of that same far right as part of their popular uprising.

Farage and UKIP - BNP in blazers - campaigned alongside fascists like Le Pen during Brexit, then returned the favour by campaigning for fascists in their GEs.

The fascist Kipperati and hard right Tories are cheering on fascist parties in France, Austria, Netherlands, Denmark as well as E Europe.

Call it what you like

Anyone who shares a platform (of course you know what that means. Don't be obtuse) with people like farage, le
Penn, trump et al automatically lose my respect and any interest I could have in their views

As I said, call it what you like.

I call it having standards 😊

That Gina miller article is scary I agree

Funnily enough, most of us here expect the UK to hold to better standards than a country that has been ruined by several decades of fascist or communist dictatorship.

Same as I don't praise the UK for not beheading women for adultery, or for brutally flogging those who criticise the rulers, as the Saudi state does.

Allowing countries to join who have spent decades under communist or fascist govt was always a huge risk.

Worth remembering that the eastwards expansion of the EU was very much a British pet project. The British were for a long time in favour of a wider, shallower EU, whereas other northern and Western European countries might have preferred a more select club with deeper political integration.

We ignore the lessons of history at our peril

Those who point out the very real historical and economic coincidences between now and the 1930s are branded hysterical remoaners

Let's see

Abso bloody lutely bigchoc