Now, I know that Priti Patel thing is a wind-up. It has to be, but….

Given where this country currently is in terms of the looking glass, I actually feel I cannot be 100% sure.

Please tell me it isn’t real.

Let’s stop beating around the bush. Do we reckon this is still valid?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/26/post-brexit-uk-always-welcome-back-in-eu-says-timmermans

Unfortunately, the story will be that her boss failed to back her.

And that neither of them mentioned the b-word.

🤭

I’ve got a Brexity acquaintance on the hook on Facebook at the minute.

I’m hoping he’s going to try the ‘there are shortages in Europe too’ Brexy myth.

To which I shall just reply “I guess their populace is just more intelligent than ours, then”. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Big roll felt left out, so is now making a comeback on the back straight….

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58685889

But it’s still Petrol & Diesel from Bog Roll as they approach the final bend, but the canny punters know that Pasta is a strong finisher and this year’s Panic Buy Stakes (steak is a distant memory) is hotting up to be the race of the season….

🇬🇧🍆💦🇬🇧

Bet she doesn’t dare mention the b-word, though.

Just when Johnson’s bullshit is being exposed for what it is and the sensible majority in the country are looking around for a sensible alternative, Labour are at the seaside squabbling about intra-party protocol.

👏

Just think.

If enough people panic buy, none of the teachers will have fuel (see mrs_oab, working at rural school 40 miles away this next week) won’t get in and they will all be homeschooling again.

Copy that to A B De P Johnson (man of the people). Not only has he caused the shortage, his erosion of public confidence in the apparatus of the state for his own benefit is also coming home to roost as people don’t trust a word anyone in power says any more. You can’t give the impression that a system of government is utterly rigged and corrupt when it suits you and then put that genie back in the bottle.

This is unravelling fast and it is going to get worse before anyone important has the balls to call it for what it is. They’re still running scared of the racists.

Telling different lies to different people is easy nowadays – a bit of targeted Facebook work and the job’s a good’un.

Making those incompatible lies into reality is still impossible, though.

And fatso is running out of time – the bullshit can’t disguise the real world effects of his actions.

Basically, **** him.

I’m marvelling at the sight of the anti-brexit brigade wailing because the inability to pay uk and foreign workers a pittance is inconveniencing their lifestyle.

There’s something much more marvellous.

It’s the sight of the pro-brexit brigade wailing because the inability to pay uk and foreign workers a pittance is inconveniencing their lifestyle.

🙂

If you want to eat soup, you shouldn’t spit in the pot.

Take all the emotion out of it. What does Brexit do?

It makes us more difficult to deal with. That means cost, supply problems and reduced choice. This was all explained before the Brexit vote, but enough people chose to be duped.

The whole thing is going to unravel. It is just a question of how much people are willing to take. A gallic shrug is all I can muster.

Wait until you see what utter bastard the Fail will have as their preferred candidate.

Gove? What enough people don’t realise about Gove is that this is the second incarnation of the rubber-faced one.

First was the zealot for victorian values, but he was rightly dismissed as a stroker. Now we are seeing the fully cynical profiteer version.

The Brexit Winter is when even the true believers will begin to realise that Boris Johnson Broke Britain. How many will just shrug and let him double down on a second term of bumbling, promising, and failing? That’s the big question.

It’s a sub-question to the biggest one of all (and the only one that really matters). How many shortages, price hikes and reductions in living standards will people put up with before enough of the dunces who voted for this are forced to admit their error.

I’m enjoying all the ‘definitely not Brexit’ cack-handed ‘reasoning’ these chumps go through to avoid facing the reality their racism/xenophobia has created.

🤷‍♂️

You are right in one way daz, the centrists were complacent in thinking that racism and xenophobia had been largely eradicated in this country. 23rd June 2016 came as quite a shock on that front, I must admit.

🤷‍♂️

It’s a strange old world politics. It seems to be considered normal practice that a party’s so called diehard support are more bothered about retaining control of that party than winning elections.

something’s gone a bit skew-whiff….

Your snobbish, selfish and hubristic view of the world has resulted in an environment where nationalists can leverage the ignorance of working people to vote against their own interests.

I don’t recall a slogan that said ‘Stick it to Middle Management’. I do, however, remember lots of stuff about brown people ‘swamping’ the UK, total bullshit numbers and ‘taking back control’, though. Must have missed that one.

PMSL.

it’s the horrible centrist snobs who enabled Brexit.

Definitely want to hear more about this one.

It’ll have to wait until tomorrow, though.

I do hope the Brexit enabled by us ‘horrible centrist snobs’ hasn’t led to a shortage of hobnobs and tea…

What a ****ing shambles.

🤦‍♂️

What kelvin said.

I’m not pissing my Friday evening away arguing with people who never budge an inch. Ever.

the government are in a bind, if they give the nod to HGV their immigration policy is in tatters all the other industries will want their waivers.

Twas ever thus. The ridiculous contradictions at the heart of Brexit were ‘baked in’ from the start.

A small part of me is going to enjoy a certain amount of schadenfreude that this is going unravel, but mostly I am pissed off that 52% voted for this nonsense. 🤷‍♂️

Just your regular prize for being a collosal stroker.

Write it on one of the desks, the nearest classroom is just down from the common room.

At least I won something – Labour won’t if you lot have your way.

👏

My god Danny you are a horrible snob.

It’s OK, I won’t vote Labour again, so you’ve no need to worry.

The only thing Danny stands for is his own selfish interest the interests of anyone who sets their sights beyond driving a white van, doing jobs for cash in hand, drinking Carling and going on a ‘fighting holiday’ to magaluf and unfailing snobbish realistic belief that he is better informed than than the working class oiks who have made it more difficult for him to retire to the Dordogne whilst shooting themselves in the foot because they don’t like foreigners.

FTFY. Although I hadn’t ever considered retiring to the Dordogne. I know full well I will probably be working until I’m 80.

Are you upset about something Daz – what happened to the ‘old hippy’ you used to bang on about? Are you one of Monbiot’s ‘fallen hippies’ who just love the counterculture stuff so much you don’t mind if it is rampant nationalism – so long as it is sticking it to the man?

You’ve loved the ‘sticking it to the elite’ angle of Brexit – are you sure you’re not slipping into a bit of the ‘any radicalism will do’ (why won’t someone listen to me) camp?

Bless.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/22/leftwingers-far-right-conspiracy-theories-anti-vaxxers-power

despite having no power and no support from the media

They have power via the likes of McCluskey and Momentum. They don’t need widespread power amongst the electorate to steer (specifically) the Labour Party in a given direction. It is another case of the loudest shouters driving parties towards the extremes.

Just ticking them off….

Ctk? Present.
Rone? Present.
Dissonance? Present.
Ransos? Present.
Dazh? Present.

Full House! Do I win anything?

Just one thing before I leave you to your leather elbow patches and sandals….

Do you guys have an alarm system between yourselves or do you just naturally scent centrist blood in the STW forum water?

🦈

I thought us lefties were irrelevant and it’s the centrists that are the important ones for getting elected – make your mind up.

The dinosaur lefties are irrelevant as part of the electorate, but potentially lethal to Labour if they hijack them with their nonsense. Again.

The centrists are the opposite.

:swoon:

Swoon away. I’m losing count of the number of my fellow normal people who are saying that they don’t want to be governed by a clown like Johnson, but Starmer is too hamstrung by the dinosaurs to form a credible alternative.

At this rate the Libdems could easily double their vote, and Johnson would barely notice – because he doesn’t have to.

Laughing at me but not you? How so?

Because it’ll be unwitting sleeper agents like yourself that steer Labour away from widespread popularity.

You carry on, though.

trick which only really works once

Are you on the verge of suggesting that Labour shouldn’t try to win once because that might compromise their ability to win twice?

🤭

In other words Danny

I don’t give a shit who is in charge unless I’m materially affected.

I voted Labour in the last GE because I am fundamentally opposed to the kind of petty nativism and nationalism that is currently running this country. I have not been materially affected by anything that has gone on in the last 5 years – at least not enough to be massively bothered by it.

As I keep saying, though, it isn’t me you need to convince. I would have taken Corbyn ahead of Johnson, but as Corbyn is also a brexiteer, it didn’t feel a great choice. But I would have preferred it. I lost count of people who said to me (when I tried to convince them to vote Labour) that “I can’t vote for that terrorist sympathising relic” or similar. Not my words.

Amusingly, the diehards still insist that this current ‘government’ is ‘Conservative’. It isn’t, it is a cash-spunking kleptocracy with a nationalist-populist edge for the morons. Starmer can’t out-bullshit Johnson to win back the Red Wall (they’re gone), so he needs to appeal to people who actually see what is going on.

Ego unbound Danny. ROFL

Laugh away. It won’t be funny when Johnson gets another term and maybe loses a seat or two to the Libdems. Johnson and his mob of braying twerps will be rolling in the aisles, though. And it’ll be you they’re laughing at. Again.

👏

Any of you centrists care to actually answer this?

Because centrists (moderates) don’t go out of their way to reply to opinion polls, phone in to media shows, and generally shove their oar in whenever possible*. They are more likely to be quietly living their lives, doing the best they can and waiting for the next opportunity to actually have a say that matters – and getting increasingly exasperated by this current shambles of a government.

It’s OK, though, you’ve made it abundantly clear that centrist swing voters aren’t welcome in Labour, so you don’t have to worry about the dilution of your ideological purity.

👍

*Apart from ranting on the odd forum and even then, most of us don’t do that.

Libdems love their Tory pacts so what’s the difference?

You tell me, it is clearly what you want.

🤷‍♂️

I’m not interested any more. I’m going to spunk my vote on the Libdems. As will millions of other centrists. Then Johnson will get another term.

As you were, folks.

they will simply stand on a platform of fixing the things things that they broke themselves, and the public will lap it up

That’s dangerously close to calling the public stupid. Careful or Daz will have you in a show trial before your feet hit the floor. 🤭

Well, at least he won’t get fired from his ministerial position.

Admitting the Blessed Brexit is anything other than marvellous is the only thing you can get fired for nowadays.

Putting all the other stuff to one side, they are running out of candidates stupid or cynical enough to take a cabinet job now.

What a crock of shit.

I take it a ‘nutter’ is someone with whom you disagree aka trot, sixth former, tin foil helmet, Citizen Smith. Deary me.

Well, spending all your time professing your idealism then refusing to countenance any compromise that might allow you to actually implement that idealism….

Seems a bit absurd to me. But then my party number isn’t <100, so I guess I’m not wanted.

Oh well, Lib Dem or Greens it is then…. 🤷‍♂️

Amusing how nothing gets the Old Labour diehards going like a few suggestions about how to be elected – ones that could actually do that rather than fantasies about a revolution.

Priti Patel sending vulnerable immigrants back across the Channel in breach of international law – barely a mention.

Suggest that Labour could become (oh my god) a bit more centrist – fire up the personal messages, get on the thread, one of the centrist is being sensible again.

When you talk about a ‘serious political party’, all you mean is a party which only cares about the cosseted remainer middle classes like yourself.

If Labour alienate ‘us’ with banner politics and renditions of The Red Flag, then they might as well disband.

The Red Wall Racists are gone. They drank Farage’s Kool Aid and they ain’t coming back. If the Tories let them down they’ll go for something further to the right. Once you’ve indulged your inner ‘nasty’ in the polling booth (twice) and felt a momentary surge of satisfaction you ain’t going back.

It’s because the british public are all racist thickos obviously.

Nope. But if Labour refuses to engage with those who aren’t then they might as well pack up and piss off.

I mean, even me, who would take pretty much anything other than the Tories or whatever Farage’s current plaything is, voted Labour last time (but I had to think twice about it). I tried to convince colleagues of the time to do the same, but they were repelled by Corbyn and his haplessness.

As I’ve said before, it isn’t me you’ve got to convince.

🤷‍♂️

^^^^^

In response to all the great words and theorising above.

Why is a fraud like Johnson sat on a 80 seat majority that he won? He didn’t inherit it, he won it.

You’ve got to win a general election before you can implement anything. Otherwise you are just pissing in the wind.

So you don’t want to answer the question, then. OK.

Luckily Corbyn and the true Labour supporters won the last election with an 80 seat majority. Oh no, they didn’t.

They ceded ground to a right wing populist rabble headed by a serial liar and piss artist.

I must say that if there is one thing ‘old fashioned’ lefties excel at (even more that factionalism) it is rewriting the past. No sooner had Marx’s pen left the paper before the usual suspects were rewriting ‘what he really meant’. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Meanwhile the increasingly pissed off working age middle class scout around for an alternative to Johnson’s shitshow, take one look at Labour with plonkers like Owen Jones waving a megaphone around and decide just to not bother voting at all.

👏

🤷‍♂️

lucrative was the message

There are consultancies all over the place ‘advising’ investors on wind farms and the rest. All at arm’s length, naturally.

Those 15 years were won with coin that was rapidly spent.

Maybe, but they were 13 years of Labour government. That is the fundamental point you insist on missing.

Mandelson is a PR creep, a thoroughly egotistical and cynical man. Personally I can’t stand him.

But he played an integral part in getting a labour government elected after 18 years of Tory rule.

What do you want? A Labour Party that is electable in the UK in 22/23 or banners and Che T-shirts?

Unless you answer that fundamental question there is no point discussing this further. That is why the diehards will never answer it.