The gloves are off | 34 comments (34 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: The gloves are off (none / 1)
Getting both the pope and the anti-pope in the same room to crown you king. Strong and stable. Not that it matters in the slightest. On the merrits Corbyn's softer kinder Brexit may be a plan the majority of government can live with, but it's not something May would accept and there is just no time to remove her.
by generic on Thu Mar 21st, 2019 at 11:43:31 AM EST
Re: The gloves are off (4.00 / 3)
The actual content of May's deal - or any other deal - is irrelevant at the moment. It's all about the political optics and being seen to be on the winning side. Everybody needs a crutch to get off their high horses, but the EU has run out of crutches, and May thinks cutting people off at the knees is a better approach...
Index of Frank's Diaries
by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Thu Mar 21st, 2019 at 12:13:54 PM EST
"May thinks" is a contradiction in terms. She just has a basic gut determination to hang on to her horse, high or low, and not let go. The obduracy of Thatcher without the acumen.
I used to be afew. I'm still not many.
by john_evans (john(dot)evans(dot)et(at)gmail(dot)com) on Thu Mar 21st, 2019 at 01:40:50 PM EST
Actually, it's just avoiding being on the losing side, which is May. The Tory Brexiteers are safe with that. Corbyn, though, hasn't so he needs to avoid her like she's a prison inmate marked for a hit. Which she is.
by rifek on Thu Mar 21st, 2019 at 06:58:56 PM EST
Eschaton: Corbyn Derangement Syndrom
Much of the politics in Britain these days isn't even about Brexit. It's about how most of the elite political class (Tories, most of the press, and the Blairites in Labour) hate Jeremy Corbyn. The guy isn't beyond criticism and certainly if you don't agree with his politics you aren't going to like him. Brits have a slightly more open if still complicated and confused version of our own "what does it mean to be a journalist instead of an advocate" question. But it really is at the point where if Corbyn wears a hat one day they decide that's evidence he's unfit, and if he doesn't wear a hat one day they decide that's evidence he's unfit.
In terms of Brexit, what the political press wanted (including the ones who are paid to be racist liars for right wing publications, mostly) was an Oxford debate between the anti-Brexit forces and the pro-Brexit forces, with the former led by a Labour leader who wanted nothing more than to dissolve his own party and form a new third party containing anti-Brexit Tory and Labour members, which would otherwise be basically a Tory party. The anti-Brexit forces would defeat the other side with Facts and Logic, Ben Shapiro-style, and somehow Brexit would be over. It's their version of the third party fantasies our press has here. Maybe Howard Schultz is a UK citizen?
by generic on Thu Mar 21st, 2019 at 07:04:40 PM EST
New Statesman on Corbyn.
Meanwhile, what of Comrade Jeremy? For somebody often painted as a dangerously impulsive radical, Corbyn's greatest political skill may turn out to be his talent for delay. He lets events come to him. Under his bo tree, he quietly sits, and sits, and takes the hits - as, for instance, on the referendum issue - waiting for his moment. Unblinking, he watches as Tom Watson launches his party-within-a-party. He knows that this will stop more centrist Labour MPs defecting to the Independent Group... and so he does nothing rash or angry. He is a radical socialist in his beliefs, no doubt, but he is a milky-mild Fabian in his tactics. Is this surprising? I think it is the result of all those long hours waiting in his allotment for plants to sprout, buds to uncurl, fruit to ripen. He is a watcher. He thinks a long time before acting. This is a new and largely misunderstood politics: gardeners' socialism.
by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Thu Mar 21st, 2019 at 07:16:25 PM EST
The gloves are off | 34 comments (34 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)