Westminstenders: Pragmatism versus Purity

[RedToothBrush]

There is one question for the HoC in the next week and that's will you persue pragmatism or purity?

May looks as if she is being sidelined after a backbench withdrawal of support, the DUPs withdrawal of support and an omminous silence eminenating from the Cabinet.

Her speech on Thursday where she pitted the people against parliament has been her last mistake. She's now a danger to the country's stability and the safety of MPs.

The priority for the week is to pass the SI to change the UK exit date from 29th March to the EU's new terms.

After that, with May's deal stuffed due to lack of support and a Bercow ruling it looks like we are facing some sort of indicative free vote. This seems to be being supported by ministers in government regardless of leave or remain.

The prospect of a Tory Leader Election contest looms. It remains to seen if that can happen in the next three weeks with so much else at stake. But this is the Tory party.

The penny seems to be finally dropping about the reality of leaving the EU and how we leave the EU. A week before we were due to go. The incompetence of Parliament is laid bare in all its glorious full scale.

Sanguineclamp I agree, we need to 'relocate our moral compass'.

Thank you for the link to that article - very interesting. And thanks also mathanxiety for your observations about the role of education. I'm sure you're right, and that is brought out in this article too:

We should not be surprised if, in a situation where democracy is being trivialised, hamstrung or corrupted, inequalities increase. Failure to understand the moral and imaginative roots of the democratic process, the fundamental commitment to the idea that every voice deserves hearing, goes hand in hand with the sidelining of groups that have little public leverage.
Britain today is facing a crisis in educational funding at every level. It is floundering in its welfare provision, the operations of which are measurably increasing destitution by their irrationality and delay. It is looking at – or rather mostly not looking at – an unsustainably stretched, bureaucratised and anxious health service. Those who are at the sharp end of these challenges and a good many more are precisely those whose voices seem not to be audible. No one appears to be governing or claiming to govern for them. And the holding to ransom of all public issues in the UK by the terminally confused and melodramatically polarised Brexit debate ensures that this radically undemocratic silencing of the most needy voices in our society will not end soon.
There is a clear link between the marginalising of these urgent issues and the confusion surrounding what we mean by democracy. We shall escape from this confusion only by rediscovering the logic of democratic process – its roots in a focused vision of what is due to every human agent. Remedies are not self-evident. But they should include at least a new exploration of models of democratic participation that do not start and stop with occasional voting – hence the support from many quarters for the “citizens’ assembly” model of public consultation, involving as it does a patient, monitored process of clarifying what question parliament might vote on.
But more basically, we need to ask what our educational system should do to nurture intelligence about citizenship, which is ultimately intelligence about human behaviour and language; human collaboration in making a shared world. A system that is obsessed with skills and their marketability, that is interested mostly in problem-solving, educates, at best, half of the brain. The sense of a shared human project needs a lot more resource from the worlds of imagination, sympathy, faith in all its forms, conventional and unconventional.
The heart of our democratic deficit is that we are losing our resources for imagining human beings in three dimensions. That is the level at which we need to address our crisis.

So yes, we need to address social justice; the philosophy of education; civics and the history curriculum. This is all being neglected while Brexit squashes the life out of every other aspect of British governance.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/brexit/2019/03/brexit-shows-britain-no-longer-able-imagine-common-good?fbclid=IwAR1hBKSS5Uzx9GQXVB3HGZV3mloKVwrevb2Ifq7EvVxXAx8Y6n1b4LmQqS4

Shades of how Hitler kept control

Yup. Tories gonna tory.

I've come to the conclusion that many tories are really not very nice at all.

Endgame now.

We've moved from the Orwell stage of the brexit to the Beckett bit.

The strategically useful window of opposition to the brexit/trump ended about 9 months ago.

Still, it's always interesting to watch.

Messy, of course.

HesterandThrale - Scotland planned (plans ) to have a written constitution post-independence

Mathanxiety - in Scotland, politics/modern history (in the form of "Modern Studies") is already compulsory for the first 2-3 years of secondary (Y8-10), although in practice some schools stop after 2 years. It is however a popular course to continue to Nat 5 (GCSE) or to do as a crash Higher in S5 or S6 (ds did it in S6, a good preparation for the PIR degree he is now studying)

Also going back a few posts, leaders need to earn our respect. Neither May (who, I agree, having watched the sorry slow decline in someone I love , doesn't show the symptoms I saw of early onset dementia) nor Trump (who does ) has done anything to earn respect . In fact, they have done the opposite, with the disdain that they've shown their constituents and elected representatives and the false news that they promulgate

They also forget that they need to earn the respect of other leaders - and that those leaders can read. English. No wonder the negotiations have gone so badly for the UK. Unlike Trump (who is still unfortunately in charge of a world hegemony), no-one still knows who the UK is - at least not in the sense that those that thing that the sun never set on the British Empire think that they should

singing you are entitled to your opinion sorry I jumped on you it was not meant to demean your opinion. I'm just touchy at mo. My heartfelt apologies

Front cover of tomorrow's Sun.

Hi woman! Good to 'see' you.

Tories gonna tory.

You're right, I have to keep reminding myself of that when seemingly-reasonable Tories seem to be some kind of saviour around Brexit. Dominic Grieve said in his interview today, "Oh yes I'm a committed Conservative," or words to that effect, and it brought me up short.
And then felt slight disappointment looking at his voting record. I wonder how many of these votes were whipped? (Or aren't they the kind that are?)
Samples:

www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10243/dominic_grieve/beaconsfield/divisions?policy=6703

www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10243/dominic_grieve/beaconsfield/divisions?policy=6670

I just don't get it.

Sos to you too. Sorry you’re having such a rough time.
As I said, it’s not my opinion, I was just reporting the opinion of DH’s consultant.

That Sun headline would confirm the suspicion that she'll pass the WA this week on the proviso a brexiteer takes over.

Steven Swinford@steven_swinford
New

Theresa May expected to unveil plans to hold indicative votes

Ministers invited to reading room for an hour from 9am to assess documents on 7 options ahead of Cabinet

^They include PM's deal, No deal,
2nd ref, revoking A50, FTA
Customs Union, Single Market^

Sam Coates Times@samcoatestimes
So Theresa May’s plan appears to be to dictate what her opponents options are rather than letting them vote on the options they want

This matters because the alternative plan with perhaps highest chance of passing is Common Market 2.0 - and that doesn’t appear to be on the list

Independent

And get ready for the telegraph cover...

Guardian

(thought I'd build suspense)

Its a bit difficult to decide about British nationalism and what it should be. We are now much more multicultural as a country which is great but it can be difficult to determine what our nationalism is now. We are steeped in history but our country is one of the most modern by embracing multi culturism. We are no longer just white British but marvelous mixtures of British colours and cultures. I glory in that so trying to define what is British nationalism is and what our values should be can be made so much more difficult as over the years influences from around the world have shaped how this country is now in the modern world. We can't change our history but we can't expect modern day British to embrace it completely especially as it isn't a particularly nice history. We can try and put our morals out there but with so many different cultures living side by side we would have to find a consensus what morals to embrace. Same with defining British. All we can say is that what was British 100 years ago is not what British is nowadays. I'm not very articulate but we as British people have changed so much. I think that in general we embrace our multicultural mix ( well I do anyway!) And decent people whatever culture usually have a consensus as to how to behave in society. ( hopefully) All enjoy the freedom this country has and bearing in mind our mixed society how would we reach an agreement as to what is Britishness?

Matt Chorley @ mattchorley
Somebody’s going to be in trouble. The front page has gone out with the gibberish dummy text still in the headline box

show us!

Tse @ tseofpb
Didn't the Israelites wander aimlessly for forty years in the desert after Pharaoh let them go?

Is that the message Boris wants for Brexit

Clearly it is.

Together with an example of how health and safety red table will be cut too it seems judging by his illegal lack of seat belt

Fucking insane!

wtf Boris?

Ye gods.
I go sleep now.

To be fair, being a citizen of a country which is a member of the EU is very similar to being Israelites sold into slavery in Egypt

That was a bit of a ramble sorry! Off to bed after a fraught weekend trying to help dgd with her personal statement for university and help with deciding on EPQ subject. Dgd definitely leaves things to the last minute! Nite nite to all!

"Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land. Tell old Pharaoh, to let my people go."

Damn, I have an earworm now.

Thank you Hester likewise!

Disappointing from Grieve, but disappointing times. He's been a hero, though, many MPs have done their best.

This one is impossible to 'win', for so many reasons.

That DT Bannon Johnson headline is offensive in ways that so many are lucky enough not to understand. Deliberately so, of course.

Funny old world.

I wonder how the EU will view being compared to Egyptian Pharaohs?

Good material for the cartoonists.

It's quite simply outrageous. These ERG types are indeed one of the 7 plagues.

Interesting that Revoke is on the list of indicative vote options.

I'm sure it wasn't even 'a thing' a fortnight ago.

Shows what public pressure can do.