Westministenders: May's Turd Way covered in Donald's Glittery Tickertape from his Parade

[RedToothBrush]

Where next?

Auditions for chief turd polisher to Mrs May are in full action, whilst those who don't believe in the turd, wade about knee deep in their own shit, still searching for that illusive plan for Brexit which doesn't stink to high heaven of crap.

After the dual resignation of Davis and Johnson, amongst the stench there is an air of uncertainity and expectation of all hell breaking loose.

In the last 48 hours we have been told that

1. May is more secure having crushed the brexiteers,
2. May about to be ousted by a no confidence vote, triggering a leadership election,
3. The Tory Party are about to split,
4. Brexiteers are in disarray fighting amongst themselves,
5. We will remain in the EU,
6. We get an EEA deal,
7. We will get no deal,
8. A People's vote is inevitable and
9. There will be a General Election.

Which only serves to merely highlight just how little of a clue ANYONE has about what happens next.

What bothers me now, is that Johnson seems not to have surfaced yet and there are rumours that Gove has gone to ground, whilst Donald Trump is practically on the plane and is stirring the pot praising Johnson.

Instead we seem to have a series of junior ministers and Tory HQ figures quitting in a long drawn out coordinated toy throwing out of the pram exercise, to try and get what hard brexiteers want.

If I had to hazard a guess at the general silence from key figures, I might be tempted to say that someone is going to use Trump's visit to throw a political grenade and actively invite him to endorse them.

That might sound ridiculous given that the public hates Trump, but that loses sight of the fact that the people who will vote for the next leader of the Tory Party are overwhelming authoritarian leaning and likely to be those who like Trump and would be impressed by such a move.

I note this tweet today from the wise Sarah Kendzior:

Sarah Kendzior @sarahkendzior
"There are parallels to past authoritarianism, but what's happening with Trump, in the digital age, is new and transnational. The president's loyalty is not necessarily to a state but to foreign leaders and multinational criminal alliances. The state is just something to sell."

It is clear that others in the parliamentary party will be very alarmed at the prospect. There were Tory MPs who were openly tweeted how please that disgusting Johnson had gone and are no fans of Trump.

May still seems to think that she can get her plan through and approved by the EU in its current form. The White Paper is due on Thursday.

Much speculation is that it will be significant if she fails to produce this on time, as she will have capitulated to the Brexiteers. And this will lead to the EU just giving up on us anyway.

She also announced to the Cabinet today, that preparations for No Deal were to be stepped up significantly.

We still are left wondering who, she is stitching up; the Brexiteers whose heads are currently exploding or the friends she keeps closest to her (friends? or ideological enemies).

The problem is that there just no other viable way forward at the moment, as the country is divided, both Labour and the Conservatives are divided and are more interested in their own future than that of the party and there are far too many ambitious 'celebrity MPs' who want to make their mark. No one gives a shit about ordinary workers or business. Plus there is the divine observation that DGRossetti made at the end of the last thread: The biggest obstacle to Brexit has been Brexiteers

The grab for post-Brexit power shows the whole of Westminister up as the cess pit of self interest it is, with Boris Johnson merely its biggest figure head.

Wait until the GFA officially has its head put on the chopping block awaiting its fate. Perhaps we can flog NI to Donald and get a Brexit Dividend afterall.

I must admit to finding it hard to have a view that is altogether different to this:
James Patrick @J_amesp
There is no way back from all of this. The next seven days simply decide how badly - on a scale of fucked to smouldering crater - it is going to end.

One final predictation, which I am DAMN certain of: Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are all going to be grim for political watching if you are into democratic values and principles. It will be a 4 day sales pitch for Brand Trump in all its All American Overblown Horror that Brits tend to find utterly distasteful. Expect the red carpet of full of turd glitter to be rolled out for Donald Trump Show. Expect May to embarass herself in her fawning all over him, as if she's star struck. Expect that hideously cringeworthy photo thats totally inevitable.

Politics is going to get worse. It may never get better.

(But yay football gets to cover it all up... Come on England!)

Violence in Derry is dissident nationalist. It’s a majority nationalist city with a small Protestant enclave which is being attached. It’s horrific, but happens every year around the 12th in various NI hotspots. It’s a hideous and divisive ‘celebration’ and has been for decades. Brexit has not caused it. Whether it’s worse this year than in previous years I don’t know. I bet the warm weather hasn’t helped.

I’m afraid Theresa May is too stupid and has been too inconsistent to have been plotting a soft Brexit all along. Her judgement in terms of policy and people is appalling.

www.channel4.com/programmes/derry-girls

This puts the situation in context.

Shelved the idea of the invitation.. or if she'd won the election properly, might have had more backing.

I have complained to the BBC about their lack of reporting the violence in N Ireland and in London today. A fat lot of good it will do, but if they say that no one has complained, I will know that they are lying.

This story is just bizarre and I guess is really about trying to pour flames on Labour divisions, as well as trying to associate Labour with dodgy FB practices but I could be wrong.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-hq-used-facebook-ads-to-deceive-jeremy-corbyn-during-election-campaign-grlx75c27
Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign

Labour officials ran a secret operation to deceive Jeremy Corbyn at last year’s general election, micro-targeting Facebook adverts at the leader and his closest aides to convince them the party was running the campaign they demanded.

Campaign chiefs at Labour HQ hoodwinked their own leader because they disapproved of some of Corbyn’s left-wing messages.

They convinced him they were following his campaign plans by spending just £5,000 on adverts solely designed to be seen by Corbyn, his aides and their favourite journalists, while pouring far more money into adverts with a different message for ordinary voters.

Tim Shipman @ shippersunbound
This cracking story is in @TomBaldwin66's excellent new book. Prior to publication I got corroboration from two Labour officials. Since it hit the web two more have messaged me to say that they believe it is accurate

Will of the people. Perhaps we should have a referendum on it...

Whether it’s worse this year than in previous years I don’t know.

It is. Significantly.

I bet the warm weather hasn’t helped.

Probably not. But neither has Brexit; both directly (fear over imposition of a border) and indirectly (the anti-Irish sentiment that has been stirred up in the press and online. There's been a lot of it even on MN this week.)
Probably the biggest factor, though, is republicans noting the increased fervour of the Loyalists, now that the DUP are in the ascendancy with all that power in Westminster.
The bigger the bonfires, and the more offensive the messages on them, and the bigger the marches the next day, the bigger the riots.

Sunday Express reporting Johnson is preparing a 'bombshell speech' for this week.

Can't wait.

No really I can't. I'd rather do anything than endure that.

@hopenothate
"So, it's okay to have free speech for Tommy, but if you oppose Tommy you get attacked with a glass and chair?" Watch @RMTunion deputy general secretary Steve Hedley recount being attacked by people who attended the pro-Tommy Robinson demo this afternoon.

twitter.com/hopenothate/status/1018205593784463360

"They are about attacking working class people they are about attacking trades unionists".

Thank you peregrina re writing to the BBC, and interesting on Derry 20nil I am chilled by the violent signs I have seen with those threatening Catholics in NI.

Our peace was hard won and so precious, it affects all of us.

We predicted this last year about the effect of brexit on marching season in NI, but there's Orange Lodge marches in Glasgow, Liverpool and apprentice marches too.

SkyNews are pissed.

Two separate threads

Dan Williams @ danskywilliams
Another interview with Marr and the BBC in the space of a few weeks. Last time we got the ‘BREXIT Dividend ‘. Is the PM avoiding others like @SkyNews

Rob Burley @ robburl
Think she’s probably after reaching the biggest possible audience tbh.

Tom Rayner @ RaynerSkyNews
In this instance, isn't the audience thing a red herring? All channels and newspapers will run the clips/quotes, as would the BBC if she was speaking to Sky/ITV. A fair mix of who gets to ask questions of the PM part is part of ensuring proper accountability.

Rob Burley @ robburl
No it's not

Tom Rayner @ RaynerSkyNews
why?

Rob Burley @ robburl
Because Marr is a habit for 1.6m or so people who care about politics but aren’t obsessive on it. They are important to reach and it’s also about the whole interview not just clips and quotes.

Beth Rigby @ bethrigby
It’s a monopoly Rob. Think you’ve had three PM interviews in four/five weeks and she barely takes a Q from us at presser. It’s not good, particularly given head of coms was in your former job

Rob Burley @ robburl
I didn’t mind you being annoyed, obviously, but suggestion has something to do with where the director of comms used to work is daft. We are the biggest programme, with a big audience that’s why we do best on Sundays. We always have and we having been going longer than any govt.

Beth Rigby @ bethrigby
Perhaps we should do away with plurality then, and just have BBC covering all politics, because Downing Street seems not to want to deal with anyone else (ITV gets the occasional look in).

Rob Burley @ robburl
Didn’t say that. Just think there are positive reasons for Marr doing well which are being ignored while Sky feeling sorry for itself. After all May did the Ridge show and Peston in recent times. Fact they get tiny numbers not irrelevant.

Beth Rigby @ bethrigby
Twice in five weeks. Plus an interview with BBC after Chequers last weekend. Ridge first & last interview with May in Jan 2017. I never even get Q at press conference. Happy to discuss further offline

Rob Burley @ robburl
It’s not really for me to answer. I just answer for Marr and will point out that it’s quality and popularity are pretty important when considering why she is on the show tomorrow.

Also

Mirror Politics @ mirrorpolitics
Donald Trump gives 'secret' interview to Piers Morgan on board Air Force One minutes after historic meeting with Queen

Mary creagh @ marycreaghmp
Fears strong women like @bbclaurak & @BethRigby who ask the hard questions & call out bull.

Beth Rigby @ bethrigby
I should add to this; while @theresa_may calls @bbclaurak at every press conference, she last called me five months ago. She called three men and one women at Trump yesterday. So maybe she’s not that keen on female journalists either

Rowena Kay @ rowena_kay
Theresa May is absolutely Different With Boys

Amazed more hasn't been said about who she resign-fires and who she doesn't. Greening, Patel, Rudd. Green went nicely because he's her friend. Hunt stared her down and won where Greening didn't. Nothing done to Boris...

Also see

Robert Webb @ arobertwebb
I love the BBC and attacks on it from left & right are usually self-serving & daft. But this this is a long view (and a longish read) from someone identifying its true bias. ⁦*@NickCohen* channeling Orwell. Please read

www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/07/12/how-the-bbc-lost-the-plot-on-brexit/
How the BBC Lost the Plot on Brexit

George Orwell outside its headquarters in central London. The sculptor caught Orwell’s spikiness. He stands one hand on hip, the other pointing forward with a cigarette between his fingers, as if caught in mid-argument. Carved into the wall behind him is the journalistic motto that Orwell and the BBC wanted us to learn: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

And

“The referendum is over,” declared another Today presenter, Nick Robinson. “The day we broadcasters have to ‘broadly balance’ the views of the two sides is at an end. Why? Because there are no longer two sides.” Real journalists should be able to see that everything is wrong with his statement. If Brexit were over, Britain would not be in a rolling crisis with no end in sight. As pertinently, journalists should never assume a subject has become off-limits, because that is what the enemies of free expression demand.

Much of contemporary politics resembles the brainwashing techniques of religious sects, which discredit sources of information that might contradict the cult’s teachings. Political leaders cannot order their followers to cut off communications with their families and leave their partners if they are not fellow members of the sect, but they have found other ways to imitate L. Ron Hubbard. Their most effective technique is to take a half-truth—that all journalistic choices are ideological to some extent—and use it as a weapon to suppress the full truth.

It ought to be obvious that a left-wing reporter will have an urge to expose corporate misconduct, just as a right-wing reporter will be on the watch for the hypocrisies of the left. But since deeds, not motives, make the world go round, the intention of the reporter ought to be irrelevant. What matters is whether what they have found is true or important. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are masters of the tactic of saying that, regardless of the truth of the research or the importance of the story, the very fact of the story’s existence proves its illegitimacy. The term “whataboutism” does not begin to cover the new official campaigns to discredit journalism. The political cult leader does not merely claim his opponents are as bad as he is or that reporters are motivated by their opposition to him (which is true more often than not). He tells his followers that no honest person would have covered the story in the first place. Its truth and relevance are immaterial; it has no right to exist.

** On the Labour Party divisions and election campaign- it is not a coincidence that attempts at new weird dirt appear each time the Tories drop in the polls. Remember how the anti Semitic thing reared it's ugly head again out of no where? That was after some Tory dip too wasn't it ...

On a separate note -Of course Mrs May rushed to invite Trump before her disastrous election performance

Yes and she really was courting him at that point. She made three visits to the United States more than anywhere else (outside Europe). She also prioritised:
▪ One visit to Bahrain, India, Iraq, Japan, and Turkey
▪ Two visits to Canada, China, Jordan, Saudi Arabia

Her priorities at the outset were sniffing around for trade with anyone, anywhere. I do think she envisaged and favoured the hardest of Brexits at that point unilaterally deciding that's what the will of the people wanted.

I do think that UKIP type interpretations regarding immigration etc are seen as being the will of the people,rather than what they really are, which is an influential minority of floating voters who effectively therefore hold a casting vote .

I'm not sure where my pondering fit with DRGs theory that she has learned to deliver extreme Leaver rhetoric with a softer reality, but at the outset I'm not convinced that was true.However that position may have evolved later on.

In addition to the initial courting of Trump and the Middle East there were:

1. The red lines.

2.The hostile immigration policy. 3.Trying to trigger Article 50 with no parliamentary process. 4.Fighting the Gina Miller case rather than just allowing a parliamentary Vote at that point.

1. Colluding with suppression of the impact assessments.
2. The Henry VIII powers.
3. The shabby attempts to link refusal of defence cooperation with economic gain.

It is almost like the Fintan O'Toole Article that she/ the government were doing "trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.."

But then due to lack of parliamentary majority, or listening to business or civil servants or both, it started to dawn that the timing wasn't right.

So the recent white paper is a genuine back pedalling from the original intentions at the time she scurried off to the Middle East and made the first Trump visits.

Sorry bold fail and probably s rambling theory fail too.

That rushing off to the Middle East soon after the ref always troubled me. Trump went at the similar time too. It was almost like they were competing for something.

Lonely it was said at the time of citizens of nowhere it was a trial balloon. I believe May uses the technique extensively. She did at the home office.

Potentially a perfect storm in NI this summer: devolution running into the ground; genuine threat to the GFA from Brexit; Brexit anxiety; DUP propping up the Tories; Trump; EDL twats protesting; long, hot days...

A non-functioning NI Assembly makes things so much worse for everyone in NI, as does Brexit uncertainty of course. I imagine that Somerville is right that nationalists are pissed off with all the fawning over the DUP. They are vile, and seeng them strut about looking so pleased with themselves is maddening. But they are just doing what any political party in their position would do (eg Lib Dems in 2010). They’re not espousing new policies. Anyone with eyes and ears knows what they are and what they stand for.

I've got to say, I've always thought that triggering A50 in march at the start of spring / summer given the potential for civic unrest, was not the smartest of moves...

That Labour / Facebook story is very odd...

Suggests that Corbyn only followed the progress of the campaign from his Facebook

The white van man tax too was a more narrow example of a trial run that was back pedalled from.The hostile environment definitely was the equivalent of Trumps child cages.

It's ok perhaps, if it's a genuine suck it and see approach, but not if it's a way of perfecting methods and sharpening messages so that deeds can follow.

She's literally used the text for the 'First they came for" poem as her model.

There was also the school census asking a new question about Nationality. This had mixed reactions with some people not understanding the problem because "they've always asked for information, haven't they?" type responses, and others objecting because a) they had suspicions about how the information would be shared and b) schools were not doing sufficient to make it clear that it wasn't compulsory to answer.

If they had been asking e.g whether English/Welsh were the child's first language, there could have been some justification on the grounds of needing to make extra provision for non-English speakers. But they didn't ask that and it became clear that one reason for the information would have been to pass the information on to the Home Office. A campaign by some on MN and some Headteachers caused them to backtrack on asking these questions. So yes, another attempt to see how far they could go, but one they didn't get away with that time.

Then we had the Windrush furore - which had been going on for a good few years, but fortunately came to the public attention. We really do have to be vigilant, and not be afraid to protest.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-mp-andrew-griffiths-lewd-12919733.amp?__twitter_impression=true
Tory MP Andrew Griffiths' lewd and depraved text message demands to two barmaids revealed
EXCLUSIVE: The married Tory sent 2,000 texts over three weeks after becoming pals on social media

This is a complete car crash.

He sent money for X rated videos
Boasted how he'd beaten women in sex sessions
Wanted threesomes
His 47 year old wife had their first child in April

Just what May needs this week.

DH and DD were on the South Bank this afternoon/evening.
A man wearing a “Free Tommy Robinson” T shirt was walking along the river and encountered a lot of booing and hissing - DH said the man was getting very wound up but didn’t have his nasty friends with him so couldn’t do much about it.

The violence was reported by the BBC but quietly tucked into a short paragraph about the anti-Trump demonstrations. No front page headlines.

I was idly wondering today whether the Boaty McBoatface poll was a trial run for a 'will of the people' poll. Just checked and...

'The name Boaty McBoatface was originally proposed in a March 2016'.

He (Griffiths) sounds like Trump.

Mail on Sunday

Jess Phillips @ jessphillips
I challenge the Tories to justify a man bragging about having beaten women and asking women to perform violence on each other.

I trust everyone here will post information on all Tory MPs who accept this challenge, whether deliberately or unwittingly.

Gets popcorn