Westminstenders: Drain The Swamp

[RedToothBrush]

Johnson lost his first vote by 27.

The Commons take control again, and Johnson is now, with his majority gone, is seeking an election.

Whilst the feeling might be one of victory there is a definite sting in the tail.

Johnson has purged the party of 'trouble makers', meaning any replacements after an election are hard liners. And they will be in safe seats. Possibly many of which will be careerists parachuted in.

The party has split. The civil war is over.

Parliament has just lost some of its very best minds in the process. That bodes ill for us all in the long term. The polarisation has just jacked up a level. The centre has fallen even more.

There are no more moderates.

Polling suggests that Johnson won't be blamed for any of this and that's significant.

Take note of this tweet

Douglas Carswell @Douglascarswell
Boris Vs the political Parasites. Guess who wins across suburban Britain?

The optics are not about what you or I are seeing. Nor about what any of the politicial pundits are seeing.

The Democrats and the Media failed to see Trump coming... And this is what now concerns me. His optics are not bad with his core and targets.

Will Johnson be able to have his election?

If yes, I fear the polls look good for Johnson. People want 'Brexit over with' and don't want another extension. They may or may not understand the ramifications of that.

If no, then what? Johnson can do anything with his numbers. Does that mean potentially two governments and the Queen stuck in the middle? Or does he limp on, with no intention of doing anything but take us over the cliff by counting down the clock?

Or something else?

The Brexit Party and Conservatives now seem to have formally united one way or another. They have aligned with current politics alike the divided Opposition parties.

Tonight the penny might have dropped with a few Labour MPs too. They want May's deal to return. Its the only deal there is, in the absence of a Johnson plan and a Labour / Opposition plan. Too little too late...

This isn't going away as an issue either. Stoking up anger against the rebel alliance is a long term project for the fascist right.

Is tonight’s result a victory? Yes, but my fear is its potential to be a Pyrrhic Victory.

The battle today may have been won, but Johnson still looks set to win...

On the plus side, Johnson is revealing just how crap he is at his new job.

Which is a lesson, writ large, about sexism.

Like that idiot bloke that every woman has seethed over at some point, he just keeps fucking up every opportunity that other men seem inexplicably to grant him, over and over again: investing in him a bizarre belief that experience proves ungrounded and hopeless, over and over again.

It's definitely a man thing.

Honestly, the vision of Boris Johnson as PM should be bringing about a women's revolution, never mind bringing down the government.

I’d probably agree on that BigChoc a Corbyn election majority on a manifesto promising a PV would be the same as Cameron achieving one in 2015 having promised the ref held in 2016. A new mandate to hold a people’s vote would certainly exist I agree.

I do think a new people’s vote 3 years after the last one who’s result had yet to be enacted is IMO very different from promising a vote on something that the electorate hadn’t been asked about in a ref since .1975. Back then, of course the result was implemented and we lived In an EEC/EC/EU Member State for 40 years.

If such a vote were held and Remain won, I think the outcome could be seriously poisonous, and I wouldn’t dispute a similar description of the current atmosphere either way IMO.

Quite how the Conservatives who haven't rebelled can justify their utter lack of integrity in dumbly following this 'leadership' is beyond me.

One of them is an ex-friend of mine. We had joint birthday parties as children, sat our A-levels side by side. I used to be sorry we lost touch, now I sincerely hope never to see or speak to my former friend again. With this vote, it's gone beyond something we could debate. I have nothing to say to someone who is willing to hand the country over to disaster capitalists on a silver platter.

A hypothetical ref with a remain win will not be so poisonous as brexit.

There's a big difference between people not getting what they want and people not getting what they need.

At this stage any form of brexit will cause people to not get what they need. Due to brexit there's been cancer patients who can't access treatments and medicine shortages and we haven't even left yet.

Why would any reasonable person cling on to leaving at this point. It's shite. It's conspiracy to commit GBH and murder.

It's conspiracy to commit GBH and murder
It sure is.
Call me old fashinoned, but I don't normally do deals with those sort of crims.

I do fight them though. It is marvellous fun

Aside from the revocation of the passes, it also looks like the Tory Rebel MP's are being asked to ghost themselves on digital communication channels...

What's happened there rigueur?

A leaked screenshot from the WhatsApp group of Tory MP's.

Those who've had the whip withdrawn have been asked to leave the group.

Telling....it's not just taking the whip but a wholesale "eviction" happening.

Stalinist.

Thanks.

These are all things people are told Corbyn would do, purging the party and so on, have the conservatives hit terminal velocity yet or are they still accelerating towards it?

PMK

pmk, can't keep up...

Is he really going to chuck actual Churchill's actual grandson (Nicholas Soames) out of the Tories for this madness ? I want to see if Soames' local conservative association would do that. I'm no fan of white male rich boy privilege or Soames generally or the Tories but, seriously, their appropriated hero's grandson?

The Tory Parliamentary Party appear to be reenacting among themselves various stages of the French Revolution, from c. 1792 on.. We are now in the Reign of Terror.

Placemarking with a hope that this is the start of a real coalescence of a new centre ground. Though perhaps the new sanity springing up in the Labour Party might be a hindrance.

.

Dh and and discussed this as he got ready for work - I get to listen to Today on the way to work but Dh leaves earlier.
We are both lifelong Labour voters but not with Corbyn as leader. We live in a strong Leave/Labour area although our MP voted Remain. We are also pissed off with him in a local issue.
Would we hold our noses and vote Labour if it stood on the clear platform of a second referendum? Even if our instinct was to vote Lib Dem as the least worst in this mess?

The problem with any further referendum is IF this highly illegitimate device is used it needs to be done properly. We'd probably need at least a couple of years to do it - set up an independent commission (hard to imagine who'd be regarded as independent by all parties in this), information booklets, voting system decisions, campaigns, then the actual vote. The UK syatem is great at the drama of a single evening in the Commons, a quick kill election or vote. This sort of longer term participatory democracy, so familiar to other countries as in the US town halls and much more deeply penetrated local elections, has never been fostered here. All we had were political parties, now run by six activists per ward, and local councils which have been hollowed out by decades of centralisation. The concept of a responsible approach to voting rather than a Boaty McBoatface gigglefest isn't there.

My thoughts exactly @TemporaryPermanent .
But I live in an area that regularly gets Tommy Robinson stickers on the lampposts. It's my idea of compromise with the No Dealer Quitlings.

@bellinisurge, I'm having the same battle, but just in my head at the moment. DH May be bored of me right now.

Woman, while there is a large and vocal section of leavers who are racist meatheads, I've actually seen very few actual threats of murder and murders happening. Again, this is not me minimising or condoning those dangerous idiots, but to paint most leavers with those colours does them a disservice. It's hyperbole which damages a legitimate message, in my opinion.

Louise, what you suggest doesn't allow for people who a) may have totally changed their minds or b) would rather remain if those are the options. I don't think that's democratic.

BCF, I've been sitting nodding at your posts, except the Anna Soubry bit. Anna would vote for a WA with a PV attached. I actually think it may have more supporters than anticipated.

I do think the WA may squeeze through now, however. BoZo is put into an awkward position with it too. As he can't blame anyone but himself if he whips against the WA. He wants to blame everyone else (as Ken Clarke said last night), but wouldn't be able to. Hence why I think it has a chance to go through, as it paints the Boris 'blame game' rhetoric into a corner.

I'm too busy to work watching all this!

Oh, the passes will work again today once it's fixed. They're still MPs, so have a right to be there. Stupid and petty of the Tory party really.

And...I feel like Columbo...the mood is changing in the press against BoZo and his cronies. We saw hints of it yesterday. Don't bet against this heightening. Especially with these expulsions.

Interesting times. Again.

You see? I'm completely out of touch because people - lots of them - will.

You live in a city. Out here in the sticks you can live life and rarely see such homelessness. It's invisible to those in the leafy shires.

Unless I go into Manchester I don't see it. I shop out of town and in shopping centres mainly. There are no homeless there.

The voting patterns of the metropolitan areas, the rust belt towns and the rural shires are different because people living in them all have very different bubbles.

I'm probably a rarity in that my life actually crosses all three in various ways. I could exist in just one but actively try not to and don't want to.

Nimby culture is a huge driver of the problems we have IMHO. It's not immigrants they want to keep out. It's expose to poverty and hardship.

Those attitudes and that ignorance is something I see regularly.

I'm no socialist but I can see how hiding problems isn't solving them and that has ramifications.

I am despairing of what comes next. It's not pretty and not pleasant. We've had the political cleansing. Next comes the social cleansing.

People will start to die over Brexit and I suspect it will start in earnest in mid October not the end of October.

Many inhabitants of rust belt town's' 'have outlived their usefulness'.

Tbh I think I'd take the withdrawal agreement now...

The idea of legislating against no deal is a myth, isn't it? I can't see much stomach for a further extension within the EU, particularly if it means Boris in charge of negotiations. And I strongly suspect after a GE it may well be Boris still in charge of negotiations.

But then I thought the tories would steamroller the last election... So who knows.

PMK.

On the plus side, Johnson is revealing just how crap he is at his new job.

You are mistaken cat. He's doing great in the job. Excellent even.

He's tough and principled. He is standing for what he believes in. He is showing good leadership

He is doing what the people who voted for him and support him want. And he's just getting started.

Remember being dreadful hasn't harmed Trump...