Westministenders: Hustings and Humilation

[RedToothBrush]

Round 1 has passed.
Boris is winning. But these are the Tories. Surprises might yet happen.

But the chances are the lying buffon is full speed ahead to be the next PM. As long as he manages to keep his mouth shut.

Unfortunately being Prime Minister involves talking. This might prove to be something that bursts the BorisMania rather rapidly.

A GE is still very much on the cards.

And we might face the Constitutional and undemocratic shutting down of parliament to satisfy the Tory Faithless.

Meanwhile the EU couldn't give less shits. They just think we are wasting the time we were granted in good faith.

31st October beckons with No Deal.

I simply cannot agree with NG at all. For me it's more to do with informed consent. None of the leave literature said we'd leave with no deal; it was specifically stated we'd leave with a deal. What wasn't known was that we'd start negotiations on a back foot with red lines and then have even leavers not voting for the WA, so we could actually leave, thereby throwing us into a constitutional crisis. So actually leavers aren't getting what they voted for and another vote would at least clarify whether all 17.4m leave voters were actually happy to leave on the negotiated terms.

While 'Project Fear' has been proven to be 'Project Fact', I don't think it's undemocratic - and certainly not fascist - to want to confirm that there's a mandate to leave in the manner which has been negotiated (or with no deal).

I realise I am wasting pixels in asking though.

Yes, given that it's a quote from Noel Gallagher and he's not on here to answer!

Momentum and Tony Blair are having it all out at the moment.

Steve Howell has a very long thread on twitter, most of which I agree with - basic gist being shift from wage earners to capital started under Thatcher but continued to be enabled under Blair. Mitigation by Blair at the lower end was achieved by redistribution from middle earners to the bottom (while in the words of Mandelson "being intensely relaxed about the filthy rich"). Ed Milliband recognised the issue but was considered too Left by the electorate for pointing it out. By the time we got to 2017 the pendulum had swung so far that the Left leaning electorate had gone beyond Milliband to Corbyn.

On Thatcher I tend to agree with Loki:

Blair is such a toxic figure that the New Labour project has become impossible to analyse objectively. To say it was a continuation of Thatcherism is not true. Thatcherism itself was simply a branding exercise. The trends economically were global and did not flow from Thatcher.

(Loki's "defence" of Thatcherism also lets Blair off the hook for some of Howell's criticisms but leads back to the wider critique of Globalisation and hence towards Lexit)

howabout I don't actually have a problem with promoting more seasonal eating, reducing the consumption of meat - all those things are good for the environment, and I'd quite like there to be a planet left for my kids. That's hardly the same thing as saying that we should all just go back to eating turnips because Blitz Spirit and socking it to Johnny Foreigner.

I don't mind the sugar tax either, actually. Or whacking massive tax on cigarettes. I'd like to see alcohol get a lot more expensive too, given what a harmful drug it is. What I don't like is being deprived of things because of knee jerk jingoistic delusions of empire.

I voted Green in the last EP elections, because it was tactically the best way of keeping the Brexshit Party out. I've also voted Green in Dutch parliamentary elections (which I am still eligible to vote in because the Dutch don't take your vote away after X years).

Anyone quoting noel fucking Gallagher loses any pretence at credibility.

I don't mind Noel in general. He's a total knob on this subject though!

howabout, well I suppose that marks Tice out as having slightly higher standards than Farage, who's taken everything on offer for 20 + years.

I wonder if the new BP MEPs will manage to avoid the the expenses scandals of their UKIP forerunners, or indeed achieve better attendance.

I find it a bit weird that you talk about 'virtue signalling' in relation to something that hasn't actually happened - a charity potentially turning down money from a brexit party MEP - but don't think it's virtue signalling for said MEP to make a song and dance about giving away his salary in the first place!

Corbyn has several policies that I would welcome

I agree completely about non-interventionism, no more getting involved in US wars for oil or empire,

That would save so many lives and avoid adding to the 65 million refugees from war

I also oppose the ridiculous waste of Trident - and the unwelcome risks the missiles bring to Scotland
I oppose keeping military spending to the 2% minimum the US demands
Time to give up Uk imperial delusions of military might

Oddly, the politician who imo expressed the waste of military spending so clearly (in one speech anyway) was the late GOP POTUS Eisenhower !

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The costt^ of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.
We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyerr^ with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . .

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.
Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

pointy I'm fine with health taxes on gambling, cancer sticks, alcohol, sugar - even more expensive chocolate ! - too
Ironic if that helps reduce the rich / poor health disparity, but I can't view it as hitting the poor.

However, these taxes need to be accompanied by measures to help the healthy food deserts in poor areas and to reduce prices of e.g. veg, fruit, wholegrains

I also agree about making sacrifices to avoid worsening climate change

However, currently the sacrifices proposed - especially fuel taxes, electric vehicles - don't affect the wealthy much, but hit other groups significantly in their ordinary lives

We need to share the burden more fairly

To somehow mitigate the effects on e.g. the car industry, which employs thousands of workers

• the AfD has gone all out against climate change measures, like most Western far right parties, but has made a particular play for the 700,000 workers in the German auto industry and the millions dependent on it

And of course, cars are still what most people - not me ! - use frequently for transport
and making it more expensive hurts ordinary people too,
which again the far right can take advntage of, as in France

I agree with you 100% - no stick without carrot, no sacrifice unless it affects everyone and preferably the poorest the least.

Eisenhower did a hell of a lot more than just warn of increased military spending. He prophesied (and warned against) the military-industrial complex where one needs the other in an unholy symbiosis.

It's what we have today. Weapons must be used.

Luckily for the world, as with Jesus no one (that mattered) was listening, so we were able to carry on. Lucky escape, eh ?

Survation is sending me email after email. They clearly have trouble recruiting Northern women into the Conservative Leadership tv debate who would admit to considering to vote or voting Tory.
(I went to the Labour leadership debate what feels like ages ago.)

Elenade something popped up on my Twitter feed trying to prompt women to apply for the TV debate said they had way more men apply than women and were looking to even it up. Think there is genuinely less female members than male. They are going to struggle to make that audience look anywhere near representative of the British public.

Channel 4 news had a quick piece about leadership race and had four Tory party members on three men and one woman guess who wasn’t invited to an ‘informal ‘ dinner to meet Johnson ?

And she’s was a local councillor who was openly supporting Rory Stewart. You would think she would be exactly the sort of person they would want there, rather than a load of old duffers sat there agreeing with themselves!

Quite, Basil.

I've felt really unsettled and rather sick for the past few days, I'm pretty sure it's the thought of BJ as PM and this absolute shit show where we lurch from bad to worse, and then when you think we've hit rock bottom, down we go again.

I wonder how many others feel the same?

Me tokyo

DG Yep, Eisenhower came from the era when Republicans were pretty moderate sensible human beings
(given the social limitations of the 1950s)

He was the first to call serious attention to the military-industrial complex, that both the GOP and Democrats have long since supported,
it soon became the military-industrial-political complex of course

He said things that would be demonised as Marxist treason by the current GOP

Interesting that it was Tricky Dicky who made the big push to take the racist Southern Democrats angry at LBJ, which sent the Repiblicans on a far right course

• Nixon's daughter Julie married Eisenhower's grandson David

Tokyo, buffy You've got the Brexshits
Probably coming to everyone (not rich) after Halloween

True, probably just an early case of something that's coming to us all BigChoc

It's been an odd few weeks for me...ds1 just finished his gcses and all the angst over that.

I'm trying to secure more funding for another charity project.

I'm dealing with peri menopausal bullshit.

And now the prospect of bojo as PM.

I am a woman on the edge!

I am also very anxious all the time (not just because of Brecit), so lots of colourful stitching and other forms of relaxation for me.

Went through my stockpiles today.

Planned some spending on the house over the summer (about £500 worth).

Think our October half term trip is off if bojo (or whoever) goes for no deal on 31/10.

I've just signed up to a course so I can apply for paid work after the summer.

All in all it's a total headfuck.

Just backtracking to the loss of the motion in Parliament when it tried to use the last Opposition Motion Day to try to put in safeguards against No Deal.

I hadn't looked at the details that closely and had accepted at face value the comments that the motion had been doomed before the Division was even called because it had Corbyn's name on it

But, but, BUT.....

....I've just found out that although it only lost 309-298, it wasn't just that eight Labour MPs voted against - which in itself didn't surprise me (given the usual suspects like Hoey ) but that 17 abstained

So the motion could and should have been won

The details were in a post in one of the Pro-Indy Facebook groups that a friend shared.

SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford last night branded the actions of some Labour MPs as “unforgivable” after they brought down a move to stop the next prime minister taking Britain out of the EU without a deal.

MPs opposed to a no-deal Brexit were once again attempting to seize control of parliamentary business. But a cross-party motion that would have given MPs control of the business of the House on June 25 was defeated by 11 votes as some Labour MPs voted against and others abstained. The motion was lost 309-298, with eight Labour MPs voting against and 17 abstaining.

Blackford tweeted: “We lost the motion today that would have created the circumstances to stop no deal by 11 votes. All 35 SNP MPs voted for the motion but only 222 Labour MPs supported it. 8 voted against, 17 abstained. Unforgivable. Little wonder Labour are an irrelevance in Scotland.”

The vote came after Tory leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson warned that MPs would “reap the whirlwind” if they tried to thwart Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

Despite the motion being killed off by their own MPs, Labour sources said the party would try to find other routes to block a no deal.

"This is a disappointing, narrow defeat. But this is just the start, not the end of our efforts to block no deal,” said shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer. “Labour stand ready to use whatever mechanism it can to protect jobs, the economy and communities from the disastrous consequences of a no-deal Brexit.

"Any Tory leadership candidate should know that Parliament will continue to fight against no deal.”

The motion was supported by the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Greens and Plaid Cymru as well as the Tory former minister Sir Oliver Letwin.

Earlier, Johnson said during his leadership launch speech that MPs will face “mortal retribution” from the electorate if they try to stop Brexit. The former foreign secretary presented himself as the one candidate among the contenders bidding to succeed Theresa May who could stop Jeremy Corbyn seizing the keys to Number 10.

At a packed launch event in London, he said it was essential that Parliament now delivered on the 2016 referendum vote and that Britain left the EU, without a deal, on October 31. Johnson said: “I think maturity and a sense of duty will prevail. I think it will be very difficult for friends in Parliament to obstruct the will of the people and simply to block Brexit. I think if we now block it, collectively as parliamentarians we will reap the whirlwind and we will face mortal retribution from the electorate.”

Johnson insisted he wanted a “sensible, orderly” departure from the EU but said the country had to be ready for a no-deal Brexit, arguing that was “the best way to avoid” crashing out.

He said: “It is only responsible to prepare vigorously and seriously for no-deal. The best way to avoid that is to prepare for it and be absolutely clear to our friends and partners that we are prepared to do that.”

Johnson warned that failure to deliver on the referendum result would create an “existential threat” for both Labour and the Conservatives. He said: “Around the country there is a mood of disillusion, even despair, at our inability to get things done. After three years and two missed deadlines we must leave the EU on October 31.”

pretty That's disgraceful behaviour by Labour MPs
I knew about the 8 votes against, but didn't realise there were abstentions too

So, 25 didn't support a Labour motion, with Corbyn's name on it
Wasn't it a 3-line whip ?

I completely understand Lexiters not voting Revoke or PV,
but I don't understand how any MP, who cares about the non-millionaires in their constituency, can want No Deal

I suppose some could be as stupid as those Tory Brexiters who (claim to) believe we need to keep No Deal as a bargaining chip.

Wake up in the back there: A50 negotiations are finished !

What figures are we talking about in bojos new plan to give more money to those up to £80k?

Please forgive my denseness but if someone is on 80k they pay 40% tax, yes?

So assuming boko gets in and takes those people down to the 20% tax bracket how much better off per month and per annum would they be?

How will he finance this? By not paying the "divorce bill"?

(Sorry I'd this has ready been covered)