Westminstenders: Game On?

[RedToothBrush]

Johnson has had prorogation approved by the Queen.

There has been widespread outrage and horror both in the UK and in Europe. Johnson has ripped up the principle of Liberal democracy even if constitutionally what he has done is legal. In shredding convention and the 'gentlemans agreement' of understanding we teeter on the edge of democratic collapse.

Talk is tha Dominic Cummings is persuing a game theory principle of deliberately putting us on collision course with the EU. The idea being that they will blink first because the alternative of what will happen is just too awful for them to allow. The idea is to force others to make the moves whilst Johnson appears principled and strong, even without a proper strategy and plan for a deal.

And there is the rub. Despite all the Talk of no deal, at some point a deal MUST be made, regardless of whether its before or after 31st October. There is no sense of what that could be and how it could be done. And then there's the prospect of a US deal which suffers from the same lack of tangibility.

All there is, is how things look for a General Election. Nothing else.

Johnson is pitching for an election with no sense of what's needed for Brexit - including the legislation needed for no deal. Not to forget that Cummings, strategist that he is, apparently isn't here for the long haul, only being contracted until 31st October, when he goes for surgery he postponed to take on this job.

So what's the plan for Johnson Post Cummings? Or is he going to do even more 'winging it'.

Meanwhile there's an awful lot of moderate Tory MPs getting very nervous and already failing to stick to the Cummings script.

Johnson, until there is an election is going to firmly blow hot and cool, trying to play to the hopes and fears of leavers and remainers to keep them hanging on to hope and the notion that x or y will happen, when x and y can't possibly both happen because they are completely opposing strategies. Hope leads us blindly to stumble like fools into his trap and to win his reelection.

Next week looks very bumpy indeed. Chances are this thread won't make it past Saturday...

bigchocfrenzy I'm a navy brat and that is my understanding too, that you toast the monarch not the govt... which presents a terrible dilemma to those who may be on the ground - what choice will they have? or perhaps, as you say, there's the element of Farage support.

I knew this 'sectarian' strife would 'kick off' in Glasgow with what's going on nationally. I'm still puzzled as to how and why this riot actually took place too.

Glasgow needs to get its anti sectarian booties on pronto.

Farage has regularly trashed the royal family. Most revolutions get rid of monarchies if they have one....... Allegiance to el presidente farridge is probably what that wee man's got in mind.

Soldiers are loyal to each other when fighting a 'foreign' enemy.

In a civil war with their own families unable to access food and medicine, things can often change.

And if successful, such as this prorogation, it could be used forevermore by every Government in power.

I get that the constitution is unwritten, but couldn't parliament simply pass a law that any form of proroguing requires the support of HoC? Whether or not they'd choose to is, of course, a different matter.

I'm a bit cynical really, and think we won't get a written constitution simply because the unwritten element ensures that most people (even reasonably well educated and well informed ones) don't actually know what is and isn't constitutional. It suits all governments to have an electorate who don't fully understand the rules.

Who would their higher loyalty be to, the Queen or the Govt?

I think that's getting into Roundheads and Cavaliers territory.

Cordelia,

The problem was that prorogation was enabled purely because it could be done legally. I don't think there was any time (Parliament was in recess for holidays) for it to be challenged.

And I doubt there ever will be the day that it can be anymore if this prorogation succeeds.

So future Governments can use it as a precedent. Not a good outcome for the future is it?

I am am sorry now, but three + years later and no one in Parliament managed to pass a law on anything, and here we are.

Forgive my cynicism please.

Very late PMK. Struggling to keep up here!

That's funny - I was assured by people who weren't there that only 400 000 people marched.

Pretzels I thought exactly this when I heard how the BBC had reported it. Amazing isn’t it? I seem to remember that the BBC described the March Remain march as being attended by ‘tens of thousands’. They also used ‘tens of thousands’ for the Leave March which looked to be around three thousand at best.

I couldn’t go to any of the protests today. The nearest one to me would have been a three hour round trip - not safe or fair to leave DH alone for that long - so I went along to support the Canterbury for Europe stall instead. The dog was a fellow supporter.

There were six other people on the stall, all at least late 50s (a novelty for me these days to be the youngest in a gathering ) and I’d say at least 80% of people who stopped in support were 50+.

Met a man who left South Africa as a political refugee in the 1970s. He clearly felt you don’t have to go back as far as 1930s Germany to draw parallels with what’s happening today.

Thanks outsomnia. I thought new laws would override any previous precedent. I'm trying to remain hopeful that there is a reasonable way out of the mess.

I digress but:

Many of us have commented that MN seems to have become much more rightwing and anti-feminist lately,
with less regard for facts

I just learned on another thread that hunsnet Netmums dissolved a while ago, so reportedly there has been an influx from there

born no-one noticed my red toothbrush either. But I’m glad I went, with my whole family. The London march was very good-natured even though it was so packed we had trouble getting out, back down to Parliament Sq.

I noticed that there were lots more young people in the crowd this time.

The organisers have decided to have daily protests at 5.30pm from Monday. This could gain impetus.

www.anothereurope.org/hundreds-of-thousands-in-the-streets-see-photos/

(See FB page of Another Europe is Possible.)

The organisers have decided to have daily protests at 5.30pm from Monday. This could gain impetus.

I think that daily is the way to go. That 3.5% article posted earlier had a lot of daily protests. I was thinking it earlier about Hong Kong. They haven't stopped protesting.

Well done to all the redtoothbrushers who marched today against the coup ! 🏅🍫

Some - not all - Sunday papers with marches on front page:

Govanborn - I agree with you. I'm sure all those pubs painted blue and festooned with Union flags in Govan and the Ibrox area are just full of all those Catholics

....although dh tells me the story of when some not local Rangers supporter tried to give him grief in the pub on Paisley Road West that he was working in, for the fact he'd gone (or was going to?) see the Pope, the regulars told the guy to wind his neck in. Dh might have been a Catholic, but he was their Catholic

Both sides that were involved last night are a pox on Glasgow

As GCC said, they are morons A disgrace to my city.

And at a time of such an assault on democratic process within the UK, an unwelcome distraction

Tory papers daring / threatening Remainers with a GE and even Corbyn:

Wrt Thatcher and nihilism..
www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689
It doesn't get a lot more nihilistic than "There is no such thing as society".

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and [end p29] there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation and it is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate—“It is all right. We joined together and we have these insurance schemes to look after it”. That was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system and so some of those help and benefits that were meant to say to people: “All right, if you cannot get a job, you shall have a basic standard of living!” but when people come and say: “But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!” You say: “Look! It is not from the dole. It is your neighbour who is supplying it and if you can earn your own living then really you have a duty to do it and you will feel very much better!”

There is also something else I should say to them: “If that does not give you a basic standard, you know, there are ways in which we top up the standard. You can get your housing benefit.”

But it went too far. If children have a problem, it is society that is at fault. There is no such thing as society. [end p30] There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate. And the worst things we have in life, in my view, are where children who are a great privilege and a trust—they are the fundamental great trust, but they do not ask to come into the world, we bring them into the world, they are a miracle, there is nothing like the miracle of life—we have these little innocents and the worst crime in life is when those children, who would naturally have the right to look to their parents for help, for comfort, not only just for the food and shelter but for the time, for the understanding, turn round and not only is that help not forthcoming, but they get either neglect or worse than that, cruelty.

The obvious solution to the problems associated with poverty was to pay people a living wage and not to turn vast swathes of the country into post industrial hell.

Of course this couldn't be squared with the idea that greed didn't exist; disproportionate profits were merely the result of people wanting to make more money in order to carpet their granny's little flat. Disproportionate poverty was the result of feckless, irresponsible poor people having too many children to adequately provide for.

When you look at the conflation of personal tragedy and political direction that she got away with in that interview, the pandering to the small mindedness, meanness, and hypocrisy of Little England (and I am sure she had plenty of supporters in Scotland and Wales too) you can easily see the straight line from the 1980s to today.

She tapped into something that lay not that far from the surface, brought it out into the open, and added a coat of blue paint to hide the ugliness.

Those express and mail headlines expose the end game. They are goady in the extreme and calling an election is exactly what they do want. Let them stew until it's all really shit, then we can have an election.

pretty the sad thing is that the other side are your friends, they are your family, yet when it comes to football there is so much hatred.

ALL matches need to be banned in Glasgow going forward. And would they really be missed?

BOTH clubs need to take action against the fans that sing the sectarian songs.

And the population of Glasgow need to say enough is enough.

*marches not matches ha ha.

Yes I just saw those newspaper front pages, BigChocFrenzy, particularly the Mail trying to goad remainers into a GE.

math Thatcher wanted to remove help from the poor, in order to finance tax cuts for the rich and give the aspirational wc property windfalls

Supporting only those who might vote for you, abandoning the poor, even demonising them,
is immoral and probably evil, but not nihilist

Cummings and co want to tear down all the institutions, like the civil service and rebuild them from scratch
That's like Bannon in the US, who is totally different to e.g. the Bushes

That's the difference with nihilism:
it's not lack of empathy for "the other", but wanting to destroy everything, even if it hurts your own people too.

They don't care that this hurts many of their normal supporters, many of the better off and businesses

It's not a question of degree;
nihilism is totally different to the previous conservatism, because it doesn't even conserve its own

previous rightwing conservatives have been like embezzlers, robbers and spivs;

far right nihilists are like suicide bombers blowing up a whole country

Interestingly, through my letterbox today came a leaflet from my Tory MP that looks exactly like an election campaign communication.

what did The Express ever do for the working class?

Nothing.

Chaos with Jeremy Corbyn.

@faisalislam
PM says Tory rebels make his attempt at negotiation impossible. And at the same time it will achieve nothing. And sources also tell @ShippersUnbound that ally Orban can veto any extension legislated by MPs. And the country risks being “plunged into chaos” after an election...

The famous "My friend's called Viktor and he's going to beat you up." strategy from cummings who identifies as a brainy person.