Westminstenders: Promises, promises

[RedToothBrush]

Today polling showed that there was a majority in Scotland who support Independence. The 'Boris Bounce' really isn't universal. And this is a firm sign all is not well.

There is talk tonight that Johnson is planning to stay on as PM even if he loses a vote of no confidence in order to force No Deal through and prevent a government of national unity. Instead he would call a 'people v politicians' general election to be held shortly after we'd left the EU.

Johnson's willingness to defy parliament should not be discounted and should be taken seriously. Its highly likely in one way or another. No deal is technically illegal, but its also the default. This does not seem to be fully recognised by remainers. But this is a man who lied and continued to lie. And there is every sign that he would be willing to cause some sort of constitutional crisis. Especially if he really is like Trump. This is what authoritarians do - defy convention and rip up the rule book - because the powers that are suppose to hold them to account are too weak to hold them to account. Something that Johnson has already proved time and again. He has no respect for others.

All the signs are Johnson is in fully into campaigning for a GE already. He's touring the country and ignoring Europe. He's offering money for the NHS - its open to debate whether this is new money - the optics on this are all down to what you want to believe. Those who want Johnson will believe the promise; those who don't won't.

The penny hasn't fully dropped in parliament. There is talk of a vote of no confidence being called by Labour 'at the earliest opportunity' in September. The reality is its too little too late and is unlikely to work to have the desired effect and inside will play right into Johnson's plan. The failure of the Opposition to spot what he was likely to do, has been the story of the last 3 years, where Remainers have been reactionary and unable to anticipate what would happen next. Their lack of imagination and inability to look beyond their own rhetoric has been their undoing and may cost us all in the long run.

Meanwhile in Brussels, the EU unlike our Parliament have recognised the inevitability of no deal and if Johnson wants no deal there is no way to stop it. And that he has no inclination whatsoever to negotiate.

The expectation is still that the EU will have the backstop and the Brexit Bill of £39 billion as the requirement for the opening of trade talks if we no deal.

Which leaves up shit creek.

At the same time the new trade minister Liz Truss is full on libertarian and talking to the US with this in mind.

That would mean a bonfire of rights and standards which will horrify many. That means goodbye to workers rights, food standards and data protection.

The tech giants have the ears of Washington so British ideas of a tax on them are being seen as a block on a US trade deal.

It comes as the UK has joined a US coalition to protect ships in the Gulf - something we were originally given a snub against, and led to Jeremy Hunt saying we would join a European led force. Its not clear what, who or how the US uturn has come about...

Meanwhile our summer holidays are all getting more expensive... and this is just the start of it.

This is real. This isn't a bluff.

I've always said that the new parliament could do with being in one of the smaller cities, to ensure that the link between finance and administration remains minimal. Preferably somewhere run-down a bit, so politicians can see the effects of their actions. I favour Stoke myself.

So not only English independence, but an entirely new ground-up constitution and political framework for England, Scotland, Wales, NI and their regions might be a good starting place.

In fact, revitalising local government and democracy. Breaking up the centralised command-and-control approach. Bringing back the idea of checks and balances through multiple interests that begin to have a chance of representing the multiplicity of voices in the country. Yes, this is the place to start.

(yes, the Midlands is often forgotten about!)

@stellacreasy
Nationalism is antithesis of socialism - to prioritise passports over principles isn’t progressive. Labour abandons such commitment at our peril

ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The lost £66 billion implies that the country is £1,000 poorer, per person, on average, than it would have been had the vote never taken place.

That's in 3 years, and we haven't even left yet

Certainly puts in perspective the £3,000 per household over 30 years that Project Fear (which is a nickname what they called themselves with pride ) shouted from the rooftops would potentially be the impact in Scotland of independence

Might just have been 20 years, but as dh says, we're losing track of all the lies that have been spread.

Louise it is different.

In 2015 Labour was defending 41 Scottish seats. The UK Labour campaign was run by Douglas Alexander. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, both Scottish, running the UK was still the narrative. The issue then was UK Labour being viewed as a branch office of Scottish Labour.

Scotland now only has 7 Labour MPs and Scottish Labour is run by an Englishman. The Leadership of UK Labour doesn't extend much North of Islington.

The SNP at that time were successfully taking chunks out of Scottish Labour and there was only 1 lone Scottish Tory panda with no more on the horizon. They now have 13 Scottish Tory MPs to add to the handful of LibDems breathing down their neck on the right. This alters the calculus of attacking Labour in Scotland but also how Scotland looks to rUK.

DGR your plan works for me.

Yep the poorest 20% have indeed got poorer since 2016. I am pretty sure it is more to do with PH and his continuity of 2015 Benefit freeze and Universal credit roll out though.

The economy has been deliberately engineered since 2010 so that GDP growth never benefits them. Chuka since joining the LibDems has published a paper fully in support of continuity Osborne.

Thanks howabout that was a helpful summary. I get the point about Labour having far more to lose in Scotland back in 2015 than it does now. Also good point regarding the changes of leadership, I'd not actually realised that Richard Leonard? isn't a Scot but an Englishman. I wonder if the same tactic will be tried by the Conservatives both in Scotland and UK wide, wouldn't surprise me.

I'm no expert, but what will the fact that the securities (our mortgages) held by big UK financial institutions (our banks) are now slowly melting in value do to said UK financial institutions stability in the longer term.

TL;DR - if a bank was sitting on £1 trillion worth of assets that is now worth internationally £0.9 trillion, will there be ramifications we have yet to see ?

The UK - well, the average Jane & Joe - still has not recovered from the 2007/8 GFC (great financial crash)
The rich have done well though

SInce the GFC, UK real wages (purchasing power after inflation etc) have fared equal worst of any EU country (equal to Greece !) and worse than our main OECD competitors

That's under Labour and Tory
The problem lies with the fundamentals of our system, in which the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else

As a Midlander it always feels like we are too south to be north and to north to be south. Would support Parliament sittings here especially whilst the money pit that is the HP is sorted.

So Brexit makes us poorer from a really bad base, when many people have already had many hard years

So Brexit makes us poorer from a really bad base, when many people have already had many hard years

So all going according to plan then.

There's a quote from Goebbels (IIRC) that goes something like ... obviously if we had said from the start what we were going to do,l nobody would have listened. Luckily we were able to appeal to the venality and baser instincts of the people, and they feted us as we worked ...

Pretty certain I haven't made that up. Goebbels is horribly quite easy to read and digest. In English anyway.

To be fair on Richard Leonard can't believe I'm writing this , he was voted into post by the Scottish Labour Party members. It's not as if he was imposed by Corbyn

I found the opposite when red sent me on a Goebbels read yesterday. Man bored me shitless 90% of the time and I skim read. I could not take it in other than blah blah blah.

His secretary did a readable article in the guardian though. She lived past 100 years of age.

This is the Conservative response ad to an SNP / Labour pact.

"Corbyn and Sturgeon will do a back room deal to ignore two referendums.

Politicians don’t get to choose which public votes they respect."

Comes complete with a reprise of 2015 with JC in NS pocket.

Looks like the GE is going to be all about securing the base rather than squabbling over the middle.

Worth remembering that almost 50% of current Scottish Labour voters are pro-Indy but too Left wing to be pro-SNP. The other 50% are a lost cause being pro-Union and pro-Brexit. Why I said last week Labour is at risk of losing all Scottish seats to the SNP while its voters lend votes to the Tories to strengthen them elsewhere.

We are against the political bourgeoisie, and for genuine nationalism! We are against Marxism, but for true socialism! We are for the first German national state of a socialist nature! We are for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party!
1932

The people's community must not be a mere phrase, but a revolutionary achievement following from the radical carrying out of the basic life needs of the working class. A ruthless battle against corruption! A war against exploitation, freedom for the workers! The elimination of all economic-capitalist influences on national policy. Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland.
1932

The nation and the government in Germany are one thing. The will of the people is the will of the government and vice versa. The modern structure of the German State is a higher form of democracy [ennobled democracy] in which, by virtue of the people’s mandate, the government is exercised authoritatively while there is no possibility for parliamentary interference, to obliterate and render ineffective the execution of the nation’s will.
1933.

We have modernized and ennobled the concept of democracy. With us it means definitely the rule of the people, in accordance with its origin. We have given the principle of Socialism a new meaning. ... Never have we left anyone in doubt that National-Socialism is not for export. ... We do not aim at world domination, but we do intend to defend our country, and it is our new conceptions which give us the inexhaustible and ever-renewed strength to do so.
1938

If Germany stays united and marches to the rhythm of its revolutionary socialist outlook, it will be unbeatable. Our indestructible will to life, and the driving force of the Führer’s personality guarantee this.
1943

It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.

Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths.

We shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time,or as the greatest criminals

Devotion, fervor, longing! Those are my pillars. We have to be the bridge to the future

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it.

If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth.

(Cooking tea so not read all quotes)

Got through the first one fine, do I remember what it said? No. Second one reading it....reading...blah blah I'm a man with a bee in my bonnet blah.

The last one seems like something Oprah might say.

I said I didn't do history!

Hazard my point is they strike a chord with what's going on today by either explaining it or being a quote that could almost have come from Farage or Johnson.

Pmk

Thanks for the above text on propaganda Red. It served to explain the purpose and success of propaganda to me very clearly and I can certainly relate the parallels with today

Yeah red I get that - perhaps that's why it's boring to me and i just can't get through it? The sentiment never changes my brain doesn't pick up information from it. Or I'm horrible damaged from hearing ukip speeches in the 90s

Kasparov has been saying this for years.

Garry Kasparov
@Kasparov63
The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.

Did anyone hear PM today on No Deal?

Chris Leslie on GNU, the idiot Peter Lilley ( project fear, it will all be fiiiiiine) freight transport association guy ( it will screw hauliers) and Justin Thingy, ex CEO supermarket CEO who absolutely told it like it will be.

Sorry not too coherent. In a lot of pain this eve. Hopefully you get gist

Grinchly Will listen to PM. Thanks.

Hannah Arendt is good on that sort of goebbels thing too. Free PDF of her book on Totalitarianism is on tinternet. Dr Strangelove and Brazil are the film versions.

@JohnRentoul
Brexit has made a Labour-SNP alliance too attractive for the Tories to brush aside.