Westministenders: Its WAR. Huh!? What is that good for? Negotiations apparently

[RedToothBrush]

Theresa May has declared war on the EU. She is going to be a ‘bloody difficult woman’ after she got caught out by a highly predictable leak.

Apparently, the EU are trying to rig an election she seems almost dead cert to win. They deliberately timed the leak to interfere with an election May decided the timing of. May was not supposed to be at the dinner, but after she announced the election she decided that she had to get in on the act for some reason. Wildly speculating here, but could this be because she wanted the political mileage herself?

No it wasn't a preplanned strategy. Don't be stupid. That would suggest they had the foggiest clue and a plan. Nope, the war declaration was an opportunist damage limitation exercise, used to maximise political capital.

She has now even further alienated the EU. It seems difficult to conceive how any deal will be done. Instead it looks like the election is trying to set us up to crash out. Whether the ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ happens to make the 3 page Tory Manifesto remains to be seen.

This would leave EU nationals and British national aboard in legal and social limbo.

There is also a feud building over the Brexit leaving bill, which is steadily climbing. We can not progress to the second stage of Brexit without resolving this. Again, this seems unlikely.

Thirdly, a settlement with Ireland is a top priority for the EU, and plans are being drawn up to make allowances for any potential United Ireland. This is a subject that is still to be talked about on any level really. May has been much more interested in the fate of Scotland and battling with Nicola Sturgeon.

That’s the thing. May is like the playground bully who goes around going “Do you wanna scrap ?, Do ya? DO YA?” and generally throws their weight around and most of the time gets their own way as a result. The trouble with the strategy is when the bigger kid comes along and thumps the bully, for being a cocky little shit and doesn’t like their kid brother getting picked on.

The trouble is that May is setting it up, to try and make it look like the poor little Britain has been picked on to her parents, so they go around accusing the big kid of all sorts rather than admitting their little darling is a nasty little shit.

It’s not going to end well is it? You can’t help but feel that at some point they’ll all end up in the Headmasters office and the WTO/UN/International Courts will rule against us for being a bunch of dickheads. No doubt May, will stick to character, hold a grudge and demand to leave them or say they have no authority over the UK.

That or we really will end up declaring war on Spain over Gibraltar. By accident of course. Probably to keep the ConKip party together and avoid a split.

Rule Britannia. Britannia rules. Erm, not a lot these days.

BigChoc, did you read any of the comments below that YouGov article? Gobsmacking.
Here is an example: 'I will also add that Northern African pirates, for 300 years targeted the South west and Ireland, and forced thousands into slavery (raping women and killing men).'
Once again, I ask myself what the heck goes on in history classes in British schools.

Because retrospective changes damage the human rights of people to feel secure and plan for the future, to make family commitments and lay down roots - without the state ripping up their lives.

Indeed -so well understood in Germany - and again, what goes on instead of the teaching of history in British schools?

Thanks for another fabulous OP red

Math The stupid part of the far right (i.e. most of them) receive all their info about history, politics, economics from their far right echo chamber.

Many people across the political spectrum ignored / forgot their history lessons, especially those who prefer alternate facts to the harsh reality of the British Empire

I'm avoiding BTL comments anywhere atm, after reading a US article about healthcare and what to do about babies who need expensive treatment, but are born to poor families.
BTL got onto abortion and there was a quote from a US alt-right guru, something like this:

"Abortion may sometimes be forbidden
Or it may sometimes be mandatory
but it should NOT be up to the woman to decide"

I'll continue to read many articles with different povs to mine, but I don't find BTL (except for Guardian) add any useful info. Just add hate usually.

Im fairness to British education, most Westminstender Brits seem to have managed to learn history - and general knowledge
However, I think much of this kind of knowledge comes after school and uni.

That may be another great divide:

Those who are curious about the world in which they live and continue lifelong to seek out new knowledge
vs
those have no interest in this, so they let authority figures & the tabbloids spoonfeed their alternate facts and their thinking.

Emmanuel Macron campaign hacked on eve of French election

< Bloody hell, not again. Give it a rest, Vladimir >

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/06/emmanuel-macron-targeted-by-hackers-on-eve-of-french-election

"Less than 48 hours before polling day, around nine gigabytes of data was posted by a user called EMLEAKS to the document-sharing site Pastebin that allows anonymous posting.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible. < go on, have a guess >

Macron’s political movement, En Marche!, confirmed the hack, saying it had been the “victim of a massive and coordinated hack this evening which has given rise to the diffusion on social media of various internal information”.
The statement added that the data consisted of “diverse documents such as emails, accounting documents and contracts” hacked several weeks ago from the personal and professional accounts of some of the movement’s staffers.
“Coming in the final hours of the campaign, this operation clearly amounts to democratic destabilisation as was seen in the United States,” it said, adding that En Marche! had “consistently been targeted by such initiatives” through the campaign.
It said “many false documents” had been added to genuine stolen documents on social media “in order to sow doubt and disinformation” as part of an operation “clearly intended to harm the movement”.

< 5 opinion polls - and the French polls are pretty reliable - put Macron on 62-63% >

My labour MP was campaigning outside my daughter's school tonight. The constituency is on a knife edge between labour/Tory with around 100 votes in it.

I explained I would vote for her because she's really good, and had the balls to vote against article 50, despite the constituency voting for it. I did ask her to tell Corbyn to go, though. She said "so what don't you like about Jeremy?" I pointed out that when he was commenting on Dianne Abbot the other day, he had a golden opportunity to put across the policy again, with the correct figures. Instead we had the equivalent of 'oh, never mind Diane, she's fine, she's my mate'.

I also said that he needed to stop running from the media, and that it's inappropriate to take one's bat and ball home altogether because of bias. There was a really far left bloke there going on about how the media is always going to be biased against Corbyn, no matter what. So I pointed out that if that's the case, Labour needed a leader who was persuasive enough to overcome that. The bloke was not happy about it, but our MP shushed him!

I could have kick myself now for forgetting to say about Trident, anti-Semitism, misogyny, the remain campaign (or lack of), John McDonnell, Seamus Milne............

thanks Red and everyone

the ideas of Western superiority and the civilising mission, pioneered by Mill, were still being taught to the baby boomers.
Theresa May and David Davis, are the right age to have unknowingly internalised this education.
like so many others aged 60+

Yes, I can confirm this in spades.

The only thing I would say about the younger generation is that their history lessons seem to have moved on. They had almost too much emphasis on Nazi Germany. What lessons did they take from it, I wonder? "We thrashed the Germans, (and we will overlook the help from other nations)" or "What lessons can we learn from a civilised educated nation who allowed such human rights atrocities to happen?"

Thanks, RTB and all the other regulars.

Thanks Red. Shudders.

Ok, I know local electionsare different and this is probably a pointless exercise but I added up all the votes in the various council seats that make up our constituency yesterday -

Labour 17,823,
Tories - 9849
Independents 7774
Libdem - no candidate so would presumably would get some of the independents
Plaid , greens and UKIP only stood in a few wards so got around 2000 between them.
I am probably delusional and there are lots of different factors here, local personalities for one thing plus we have a Pirate party candidate standing in the GE but it does give me hope that Labour hasn't completely collapsed here. Tories won last time with 15500 votes.

I added up all the votes in the various council seats that make up our constituency yesterday

I think quite a lot of that is going on at the moment, with informal agreements happening on the ground.

.

as I keep losing these excellent threads.

Thanks pretty

require “iron-clad guarantees” of citizens’ rights
Basically they're saying we don't trust you, largely because you're telling us not to trust you.

Anyone still disbelieving where TM and the Tories are headed towards. Here, from the mouths of babes:

Nigel Farage‏ @Nigel_Farage
I can hardly believe that the PM is now using the phrases and words that I've been mocked for using for years. Real progress.

"progress"

I am so happy to watch the UKIP collapse - it's the first happy day in politics for a long time.

Sadly, as someone else said - forgotten who already - the Tories have beaten UKIP by becoming UKIP. Our MP doesn't seem to bother canvassing in our street, but I would quite like to look her in the eye and say 'secondary moderns? Really?'

Labour still wrestling with what progressive politics should look like in a post-tribal voting era. I'm not very keen on the shopping list of weird fragments approach. Still not sure what a Labour UK would look like, but at least it might be a progressive UK, rather than a regressive England.

'I can hardly believe that the PM is now using the hate-filled phrases and words that got me a career and profile bigger than my wildest wet dreams. Real progress in destroying the reputation of the UK as a rational state.'

Fixed that for you Nige.

Hello beautiful friends

www.conservativehome.com/platform/2017/05/simon-tilbrook-im-a-lifelong-labour-supporter-and-an-arch-remainer-heres-why-im-voting-conservative.html
Simon Tilbrook: I’m a lifelong Labour supporter and an arch-Remainer. Here’s why I’m voting Conservative.

Tory party strategy in a nutshell.

Guy is too scared of Corbyn and thinks he better voting for something he hates as LDs have no chance where he is.

Fuck that. Corbyn's Labour have bugger all chance of winning a majority. So he's joining the lemmings jumping off the cliff rather than voting LD 'cos they have no chance'.

They have no chance because a) you are doing what you are told like a good boy b) you are too spineless to stick up for what you believe is right for the country.

It's so sad that ultimately so many people feel like this and will do this. Their numbers would add up and possibly change politics a different way.

This is why I have lost love for FPTP. People don't vote for what they want. They vote against it because of the other alternative being perceived as worse. No one votes positively. It's a gigantic race to the bottom. Our mentality to politics is driven by fear and loathing not aspirations and goals. It is unhealthy on so many levels. It must be having an impact on our general wellbeing, motivation and approach to life.

Incidentally the above is an attempt to get others to act like sheep and do the same. I expect this to be pushed a lot in coming weeks.

Another vote of thanks for this thread as a ray of light and dissemination of reasoned debate and information. (I've lurked/occasionally posted from the first thread).

I totally agree that the collapse of the UKIP vote is not a good thing, it just means their policies are now mainstream Conservative ones:-(.
I also totally agree with:

This is why I have lost love for FPTP. People don't vote for what they want. They vote against it because of the other alternative being perceived as worse. No one votes positively. It's a gigantic race to the bottom. Our mentality to politics is driven by fear and loathing not aspirations and goals. It is unhealthy on so many levels. It must be having an impact on our general wellbeing, motivation and approach to life.

It's hard to see any way back from all this without a total overhaul of our political system.