Rayvin

Tbf, if it was one of those "she's a woman and it's important to have a statue of her to inspire young girls, etc" kind of articles then I think that's forgivable. If it was advocacy of her politics and the "good" she did for the country, then I find it repellent.

Are you fucking serious? At some point in the future, Labour are going to fucking obliterate her with that

Swinson delivered a very good anti-Boris speech yesterday, I was impressed with it. Having said this, beyond her Brexit position I have no idea what she even stands for. I would love to hear her articulate which of Corbyn's policy positions she objects to though.

The LDs are going to be in a stronger position after any upcoming GE than they are now. Maybe she has the clout to demand that. In which case she enables a BP/Tory coalition, as the next most viable alternative, I would think. I just can't see her doing that.

Fucking good afternoon And yes, it's.. I mean none of this surprises me anymore.

That she may be, but she's also staunchly Remain. She's polar opposed to the Tories on Brexit and I don't think the Lib Dems, if faced with a coalition prospect that delivers a second referendum, could possibly turn it down even if it meant enabling Corbyn. Not without betraying their voters all over again and heading for another decade in the wilderness.

I don't think Corbyn will get in either, but I think that's largely because his Brexit position isn't going to change - I mean I was a long time backer of his and I won't vote Labour next time out principally because of that. I could see him perhaps getting in through a coalition government. And you said Momentum were responsible for creating the huge fuck up - what would a stronger opposition have done differently? Assuming they had the same number of MPs as Corbyn does now. Unless you believe that Labour would have won more MPs last time without him, despite having a 10% increase in vote share. Or is it that if Corbyn had not been leader during the referendum, none of this ever would have happened because instead of 67% of Labour voters going for Remain, 80% of them would have (the number required to break even against the Remain/Leave differential), a higher proportion of its members than the LDs and even the Greens if I remember rightly.

How have Momentum caused this over and above the Tories, exactly? In the 2017 GE, Corbyn got 40% of the vote. The Tories got 43%. That's a decent chunk of the electorate. Labour are down in the polls at the moment only because 50% of their 2017 voters have abandoned them for the LDs, because they want to Remain.

Not if we have the people's vote first. And also, Johnson is going to be compelled to ask the EU for an extension, days after saying he would do this under no circumstances. That kind of thing will drive people to the Brexit Party even if he didn't have a choice. And if he resigns rather than go through that, then we have who, exactly, leading the Tories? Gove? I'm not sure it'll be enough, they have no one left except Rees-Mogg who has been visible on Brexit particularly.

Yep true. It might de-toxify Corbyn in some ways, but in other ways it looks like the chaos in the Tory party has spread to Labour. I think Corbyn is generally doing ok at the moment though so I'm going to wait and see before judging him.

An anonymous minister has just advised that Boris will resign rather than go to the EU for an extension. If that happens, honestly, I think we should get that rainbow coalition. They get in, carry out a people's vote, then run a general election and put the damn thing to bed. On that basis, Corbyn should absolutely not countenance an October GE.

Could all be part of the theatre. Sounds like there will be a mass Labour rebellion either way which might actually be enough to stop it. Corbyn could actually have his cake and eat it here if he's into unbelievably high stakes gambling.

Don't think that debate has happened. No Deal might have a hard time getting on there if Parliament stays as it is. I think that's risky though as No Deal is clearly beatable.

Tories/Brexit Party/UKIP - No Deal Labour/Lib Dems/Greens/Everyone Else - 2nd Referendum based on a choice between May's Deal, No Deal, and Remain

I agree, I don't want them to do it. But I think that's the direction we're heading. Corbyn can now claim the Tories are forcing his hand in his meetings with the PLP.

Apparently there will be another vote on an early GE on Monday. The thinking on this is that the Benn Amendment will have become law. This means, IMO, that the Tories think Corbyn has come on strong enough in talking about voting for a GE once Benn as royal assent, that he's unlikely to back down. It would also explain why the filibustering in the Lords suddenly stopped. Now, this is a tough one. It does on the one hand put all the power in the hands of Corbyn - and the Tories might have blown their load over him being a 'coward' too soon. He could very well turn around on Monday and say that Labour won't vote for it, citing mistrust in the government to follow the letter of the law. In which case, the Tories are completely outflanked in parliament. However, the impact with the public may be less clear - I could see people taking a very dim view of Corbyn backing down "a second time". So, I think Labour will indeed vote for a GE on Monday.

In the Brexit committee Michael Gove has just finished answering a series of questions about how Dover would cope with lorry arrivals in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Hilary Benn, the committee chair, did not sound hugely reassured, and he concluded by asking Gove to admit that no one actually knows what will happen in the event of no deal. Gove did not contest this, but replied: Benn said unfortunately the Almighty would not be appearing as a witness.

Single Market yes. Everything else no.

I won't either, but once Brexit is out of the way his manifesto goes back to looking pretty good to me. And if he does the right thing in the end, shows a bit of political courage, and throws his party behind a people's vote, then there's really nothing for me to hold against him. I'm not entirely sure that any time prior to now, a vote on a second referendum in parliament would have gotten through even if he whipped Labour to vote for it.

I can only speak for myself on this, but if Corbyn delivers a second referendum, irrespective of whether or not he backs Remain, I'll be satisfied with him and can go back to voting Labour. I don't want Remain at any cost, I just want this ridiculous hijacking of a democratic vote into its most extreme form to be stopped at least until there is an actual, demonstrable mandate for it.

There are still lies abounding though. And I think a lot of leave voters probably genuinely want to believe them because the alternative is that "they've been played". Which no one wants to believe in any situation. The other difficulty is that all we can point to as hard fact for the 'consequences' of Brexit at this point in time, is that it has caused political devastation. Economic and Social Devastation have not yet occurred.

You're right, my bad. Makes him seem benign.

I do understand that, and honestly it's helped no one that the attitude exists concerning Leave voters. I think the truth is that the left has a lot of cultural power (ceded to it by the right in exchange for financial and political power IMO) and so tends to be able to weaponise things like this. From our side though, leavers should perhaps understand that we have been totally ignored throughout this whole process. 16 million of us voted to Remain, and now we're faced with the hardest possible iteration of Brexit. That isn't democratic, at least not to me - not while perfectly good compromise options exist. If May's deal had gone through, and many Remain MPs voted for it, then leavers would have got something like a 90% pure Brexit. It was worlds away from a compromise that I would have accepted. At no point in this process has anyone given a damn about what people like me think. Even Labour has routinely ignored the Remain wing of the membership (85%) in favour of trying to find a compromise position that by the looks of it was about 85% pure Brexit, a stance that ultimately forced me to resign membership earlier in the year because they expected me to take one for the team with hard Brexit, and then vote them in anyway. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to better discuss the issues in a less inflammatory way and I really think that rebranding the whole schism as globalism vs anti-globalism gets us away from all the negative labels and into the territory of a useful discussion where everyone can make salient points - especially because the two concepts span the entire political spectrum. There are left wingers as fervently opposed to globalism as right wingers are. And vice versa. No one should feel shouted down or silenced in their political opinions (EDIT - necessary clarification - as long as those views aren't inciting violence), and some of the ways people of left wing persuasions handle themselves in such discussions is borderline tyrannical. I myself have the badge of honour of being called out as a Nazi (on here at least) on several occasions. Elsewhere I'm a commie bastard apparently, but in truth I tend to get more abuse from the left than I do from the right. I consider myself moderate left for what it's worth. Economically left wing, socially centrist (which I broadly define as not giving a fuck as long as things are fair).

I know what you mean. I also think that given the increasing push to the hard right across Europe in general, the EU needed to take people's concerns with respect of resistance to globalisation a bit more seriously. Either more work needed to be done on making it 'work' for everyone, or some compromises needed to be made concerning immigration which would at least offer a short term statement that the powers that be were indeed listening. I say both these things as an immigration approving globalist myself. Having said this, so much misinformation has been applied by the right wing press about this issue (may be true from the 'left wing press' too I suppose, although whenever I try to imagine that I only manage to come up with The Guardian, which I have seen publish Anti-EU articles in the past, and the Express, which I don't read - and it's unclear how much of an impact either have compared to the Mail and the Sun) that one of the other big issues we were always going to have was that any such moves by the EU simply wouldn't be reported on. Has the Daily Mail ever said anything positive about the EU? I doubt it. On that basis, people who solely read it for their information on current affairs apparently now think the EU is a second Nazi regime that is force-feeding us immigrants and overruling our laws left and right. It's hard to combat that level of misinformation if you're a reasonable institution, as the EU broadly is. So if the EU had indeed given us anything, I think that the best we could have expected from the Daily Mail and other right wing press outlets would have been "Britain, Kings of Europe after Cameron brings EU negotiating team to their knees" or "Britain defeats Germany for a third time without even firing a shot" - the kind of thing that doesn't at all reflect the reality of what is going on, and simply seeks to draw lines between us and them. It simply kicks the can down the road and means that the next time a Tory leader needs a quick poll boost, the EU have to hand over even more special treatment. Eventually you have to stop handing out freebies or everyone else starts to feel that it's unfair - as they did. Compounded by the fact that successive British governments have used the EU as a convenient scapegoat for all kinds of policy failures, it's easy to see why people who tend to the right (and indeed the hard left) were quick to jump on the opportunity to give them a kicking. The EU simply doesn't have as much influence on our lives as people are making out - the UK Government has always had far, far more. And yet people wave away the misery inflicted under austerity without a second thought, the lack of proper policy initiatives surrounding integration of immigrants into British life, poor investment in education and vocational skills training, falling police numbers, and so on - voting back in the very people who were delivering it, so that they can get rid of a political institution that is responsible for about almost nothing that affects people's lives in a meaningful (negative) sense.

Yeah, not going to disagree on this. The EU wasn't exactly super helpful in the run up to this, including Merkel's 1 million Syrian refugees 3 months before the vote, but on the other side, we did have the best deal in Europe out of any other country in there already...