Brexit.

Arkady Arkright

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 12, 2018
Messages
814
I don't give much for its chances in the Lords, but I think this is simply Johnson's political theatre now -- "We did all we could but the unelected lords stabbed us in the back to frustrate the will of the people."
Rather shows what a load of self-serving poodles the House of Commons has become, doesn't it - hardly a spine or principle to be seen...
 
  • 1Agree
Reactions: Innula Zenovka

Sid

Time for another coffee.
VVO Supporter 🍦🎈👾❤
Joined
Sep 20, 2018
Messages
6,585
I don't give much for its chances in the Lords, but I think this is simply Johnson's political theatre now -- "We did all we could but the unelected lords stabbed us in the back to frustrate the will of the people."
There is no real surprise in it, but somehow one expects always some commonsense.
A deal with the EU seems further away than ever. Trust in the UK will drop below zero at the EU side now, I'm afraid.

Added the quote.
 
Last edited:
  • 1Sad
Reactions: Govi

Innula Zenovka

Nasty Brit
VVO Supporter 🍦🎈👾❤
Joined
Sep 20, 2018
Messages
19,742
SLU Posts
18459
And BoJo -isn't-?
It was a close call (and I'm a member of the Labour Party!) -- as Keir Starmer, the new leader, said at Labour's virtual conference last week, we deserved to lose last December.

(Actually, I've been wondering how a minority Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn would have coped with Covid-19, and I feel rather guilty for thinking both the British public and the Labour Party missed a bullet there).
 

Govi

Crazy woman yells at clouds
VVO Supporter 🍦🎈👾❤
Joined
Sep 20, 2018
Messages
1,300
Location
North of Surf City
SL Rez
2004
Joined SLU
27.05.2009
SLU Posts
5294
No, he's just an ordinary fuckwit.
He's an extraordinary fuckwit by nature of the power into which he has stumbled. Paraphrasing the Bard, some are born fuckwits, some achieve fuckwittery, and some have fuckwittery thrust upon them. BoJo is a triple whammy of fuckwittery. Said as an observing American who has very much against her will become an expert on fuckwittery up close.
 

Ashiri

√(-1)
Joined
Sep 20, 2018
Messages
937
Location
RL: NZ
SL Rez
2007
SLU Posts
-1
Regarding BoJo and Corbyn, I got the impression that the majority of party members chose them but the party MPs would have preferred almost anyone else.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: Innula Zenovka

Innula Zenovka

Nasty Brit
VVO Supporter 🍦🎈👾❤
Joined
Sep 20, 2018
Messages
19,742
SLU Posts
18459
He's an extraordinary fuckwit by nature of the power into which he has stumbled. Paraphrasing the Bard, some are born fuckwits, some achieve fuckwittery, and some have fuckwittery thrust upon them. BoJo is a triple whammy of fuckwittery. Said as an observing American who has very much against her will become an expert on fuckwittery up close.
In his way, Jeremy Corbyn can be seen, in hindsight, as a sort of canary in the coalmine for Brexit and Johnson, and as part of the wave of populist discontent with the status quo.

After Blair, and then Brown and the 2008 crash, Labour really wasn't sure where it wanted to go. I was never really sure what Ed Miliband stood for, and when he lost in 2015, the contenders all came over as deeply uninspiring New Labour apparatchiks, except for Corbyn, who had been persuaded to stand simply so the left had some representation in the contest.

Party members weren't really sure what they wanted, other than "not more of the same," and MPs weren't really sure, either, other than "not Jeremy Corbyn," and things went downhill from there.

Corbyn doesn't really seem to have changed his mind on much since the late 1970s, and he'd always been happy as the left-wing rebel, being able to keep his political purity while others got on with the business of running the party, trying to win elections, and sometimes running the government, and it didn't go well.

Add to that he's not the brightest of people, he surrounded himself with some very dodgy advisors, and he was very happy to promote what many -- me among them -- saw as a shameful form of left-antisemitism in the guise of anti-imperialism, wrapped up in a perfectly legitimate concern for the Palestinians and dislike of Benjamin Netanyahu, and you can see why things went so badly wrong.
 

Bartholomew Gallacher

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 26, 2018
Messages
4,940
SL Rez
2002
What most people seem to forget here is that exactly this Jeremy Corbyn also was the reason why the Labour Party became a serious political competitor again. Corbynmania was a thing, and in the 2017 general election against all opinion polls, which prevented a Tory win, he was able to gain 30 seats and destroy the parlamentiary majority of the Tories.

He made Labour great again, but afterwards with his too long decision making about Brexit also shoved it into the abyss.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: Govi

Innula Zenovka

Nasty Brit
VVO Supporter 🍦🎈👾❤
Joined
Sep 20, 2018
Messages
19,742
SLU Posts
18459
What most people seem to forget here is that exactly this Jeremy Corbyn also was the reason why the Labour Party became a serious political competitor again. Corbynmania was a thing, and in the 2017 general election against all opinion polls, which prevented a Tory win, he was able to gain 30 seats and destroy the parlamentiary majority of the Tories.

He made Labour great again, but afterwards with his too long decision making about Brexit also shoved it into the abyss.
No, Labour MPs' dissatisfaction with Corbyn's leadership, brought to a head by his failure to engage with the Brexit referendum -- his thinking had never really developed since the late 1970s, as I suggested, when the Labour left saw the EC (as then it was) as some sort of capitalist plot -- had led to an attempt to remove him as leader.

May tried to take advantage of this by calling a completely unnecessary general election, but threw away her advantage caused by Corbyn's unpopularity by running a terrible campaign on a very unpopular manifesto, from which she had to drop a key proposal because it was such electoral poison -- with any leader other than Corbyn, Labour would almost certainly have won.

Like Trump, Corbyn was hugely popular with his base, but poison outside it, and if it wasn't for him, we would still be in the EU and Johnson would still be a Conservative backbencher and overpaid columnist on the Daily Telegraph.
 

Sid

Time for another coffee.
VVO Supporter 🍦🎈👾❤
Joined
Sep 20, 2018
Messages
6,585
Last edited: