UK Politics: What Goes DUP Must Come Down

[Chaircat Meow]

5 minutes ago, Sophelia said:

Please note that I have had some alcohol... 

So... I have tried to educate myself about Brexit and believe as a result that all the options as a result are pretty rubbish, in order of dissociation from the EU, with No Deal being spectacularly bad, to the extent that it would be like having another recession on top of the last one (quite apart from the implications for Peace in Ireland, general cooperation in science, trade, travel etc.).  However the whole thing is so really complicated that I don't believe any individual. unless they spent 5 years of research, would really understand the way the UK and EU and bound together and all the implications of leaving/remaining.

It has also become evident that the way Parliament works is really opaque and bizarre and people vote for or against or abstain on things not necessarily because of their personal beliefs about whether things are good or not for the people they represent, but for all sorts of tactical reasons (and also, do we elect MPs because we think they will make wise decisions for us, or because they're supposed to represent our own decisions).  So it's really difficult to follow what is happening and why.

For example why would Theresa May saying she won't lead continuing Brexit negotiations mean that some other Tories now vote for her deal, which they said was terrible before?  Well, it looks like it's because they want a change of leadership (e.g. to become leader themselves). 

My country is broken. 

Because they know, on some level, that Brexit is a terrible idea but they can't come to terms with the fact that they've spent their careers advocating for it and saying it will be wonderful when it will actually be shit. So they make themselves believe the problem is Brexit has been executed poorly, and the person who has executed it poorly must be the PM, so removing her and putting a giant bellend in her place will make things better. Deep down they know this isn't true but if you live in the public eye, as MPs to some extent do, admitting you totally mucked up a national issue of cardinal importance is hard. 

[Chaircat Meow]

Oh yea, the DUP still say no. 

So, this means, I think, that even if Bercow is circumvented, the deal is now dead. It is pining for the fjords. So long May deal. 

[The Anti-Targ]

34 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I can’t believe anyone who has seen JRM speak is surprised that he wouldn’t love thinking of himself and his group as some sort of bunch of Dumbledores in a crusty old wooden clad office. I am however not surprised that you jumped to the most conspiratorial conclusion that fits your preconceived notions of him as an arch villain / nazi.

You might all hate him, but he does have a sly sense of humour. 

Its at least better than referring to your self as the TIGers!

If they wanted to go all Harry Potter reference they would call themselves the Wizengamot and JRM as the Chief Warlock.

Grand Wizard is a very specific title, and one quick Google of it tells you that in the modern era it's pretty exclusively a KKK title. The likelihood of it being a coincidence is pretty low.

Though I will admit that on page 2 of my Google search I did find a non-KKK related Grand Wizard reference, so it's possible JRM is a big fan of the Worst Witch Franchise https://theworstwitch.fandom.com/wiki/Egbert_Hellibore and its Grand Wizard. He might also be a fan of Eric Cartman's Grand Wizard persona, though given one if his most memorable quotes is apparently "Jews can't be paladins" I'm not sure it's all that much better of an association.

 

[Mosi Mynn]

19 minutes ago, Nothing Has Changed said:

Oh yea, the DUP still say no. 

So, this means, I think, that even if Bercow is circumvented, the deal is now dead. It is pining for the fjords. So long May deal. 

So does that mean she doesn't resign?

[Sophelia]

3 minutes ago, Nothing Has Changed said:

Because they know, on some level, that Brexit is a terrible idea but they can't come to terms with the fact that they've spent their careers advocating for it and saying it will be wonderful when it will actually be shit. 

That's an interesting bit of psychology, NHS (heh).  That would I think would fall under a 'sunk cost' fallacy - once people have put a lot of money/effort into something they have difficulty admitting/realising that it would be better to get out of it than continue.

I don't get the Labour party either (I'm still in it currently!) in that I don't understand why they would abstain on whether the fallback position should be Revoke or No Deal (I may have totally misunderstood this).  As I understood it, only a minority in Parliament (mainly Tories) were willing to go for No Deal at all, as it is such a destructive outcome.  It seems to me that after all this time there is no satisfactory solution and in order to avoid No Deal happening by accident (or on purpose), and to prevent something hasty being put forward because of the impending deadline, it would be better to Revoke, take the time-pressure off and be able to reconsider things at leisure (e.g. do a fully worked-out Brexit plan rather than a half-baked one, with a referendum to check people are OK with it) - or just say there's no way to make it work currently.  I get that the Brexit people are very angry and frustrated and want out now, but any Brexit will take years to organise properly anyway.  And at this point it's not even certain that the majority of people still want Brexit anyway, so why spend years and loads of money on it when there are much more pressing needs (poverty, NHS, schools justice services, disability support etc,).  OK, I'm slightly taking devil's advocate here because the politicians know that the people who voted Leave would find that unacceptable.  I understand why it's hard for them therefore to abandon Brexit, but I believe that Brexit will exacerbate for many of those people the problems they already have, and politicians need to be thinking more long-term how to address the deprived areas (one of which I live in).  I'm in the Labour party because I believe their hearts are in the right place and they are committed to addressing this, but my fear is that if they have to try and implement their reforms in a post-Brexit UK, they will not have the funds to implement it properly, and will spend all their time just trying to plug the holes left by Brexit and will get blamed for the decline in people's lives and voted out.  I simultaneously believe Corbyn is really trying hard to do the right thing and that he believes he has the answer which will satisfy both sides (a Brexit but a soft one), but at the same time I feel he has the wrong priorities because as I said leaving the EU will be colossally expensive and isolating for little gain, and Labour in power could be a good influence on the EU, hence benefitting a lot more people, and Corbyn's refusal to listen to the members of his own party drives me up the wall, the same time I admire what I see as him trying to be all things to all men and to listen to that 52% of referendum voters, many of them previously disenfranchised voters, who voted Leave, to make sure they don't become disenfranchised again.

Argh.

[Sophelia]

23 minutes ago, Nothing Has Changed said:

Oh yea, the DUP still say no. 

So, this means, I think, that even if Bercow is circumvented, the deal is now dead. It is pining for the fjords. So long May deal. 

Good.

That would be a relief.  Though it still means worse things are possible (No Deal),. but I would hope Parliament saves us from that at least.

[Vaith]

18 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

If they wanted to go all Harry Potter reference they would call themselves the Wizengamot and JRM as the Chief Warlock.

Grand Wizard is a very specific title, and one quick Google of it tells you that in the modern era it's pretty exclusively a KKK title. The likelihood of it being a coincidence is pretty low.

Though I will admit that on page 2 of my Google search I did find a non-KKK related Grand Wizard reference, so it's possible JRM is a big fan of the Worst Witch Franchise https://theworstwitch.fandom.com/wiki/Egbert_Hellibore and its Grand Wizard. He might also be a fan of Eric Cartman's Grand Wizard persona, though given one if his most memorable quotes is apparently "Jews can't be paladins" I'm not sure it's all that much better of an association.

 

I thought the title was Grand High Wizard, but that might have just been the TV Show adaptation.

Does this mean that Theresa May is Mildred Hubble?

[Sophelia]

6 minutes ago, Mosi Mynn said:

So does that mean she doesn't resign?

Haha - who knows.  I guess it depends what motivates her - if she is really all about what is best for the party she may then think it is better to stay on than let one of the others take over (kind of my view too - she is horrendous but the alternatives seem worse) - but if she is thoroughly fed up of the whole thing and feels she has done her bit and there is nothing more she can do, and that someone else could take over without risking a General Election, she might resign anyway (but I would guess not since she has been so absolutely adamant so far - kind of like Corbyn really). 

[Sophelia]

I quite liked this tweet:

Gah - can't work out how to embed it, link here, quoted below:

"So if I understand the situation, Theresa May doesn't have enough support to resign successfully."

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">So if I understand the situation, Theresa May doesn&#39;t have enough support to resign successfully.</p>&mdash; Liam Kirkaldy (@HolyroodLiam) <a href="https://twitter.com/HolyroodLiam/status/1111016366063136768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[Heartofice]

So basically nothing got a majority of positive votes. Sums it up.

Trying to work out how this works, think second ref goes through to next round?

[Philokles]

To be expected. Promising result for the Customs Union and People’s Vote to come so close. 

[James Arryn]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

But this isn't some villages in southern Spain, and Grand Wizard isn't a traditional UK title for Brexiteers that outdates the KKK by probably centuries.

I did not say what you said I said.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Maybe if they thought they had been named after said KKK rather than by coincidence  they would have thought it was relevant 

If you think they didn't know the connotation, I have a bridge over the Thames I would like to sell you.

Quote

 

My country is broken.

 

To be far, an increasingly large number of Western countries are broken and suffering from the same problem: the supremacy of ego and feelings over facts.

In the case of Brexit, the people voting in favour of Brexit did so for emotional reasons: they wanted to "sock it to the elites" and pay people back for austerity and do something "edgy" that made them feel good. Meanwhile, those in positions of power and influence who were in favour of Brexit were so out of self-interest, particularly the Dysons and Moggs and Tim Martins of the world, who were trying to avoid hefty new EU tax regulations or had preparedly moved funds to off-shore accounts to massively profit from the situation, in some cases regardless of the outcome for the UK itself. Few to none of the people who voted in favour of Brexit were able to define a coherent vision for what Brexit would look like, and almost none had sat down and actually looked at the rules of Britain's membership of the EU. It should be noted that there was almost no public or grassroots appetite for Brexit prior to the referendum; UKIP had not gained a single seat through a popular election and were only considered a threat to the Conservative Party alone due to a vote overlap and the fear that UKIP would sap Tory strength in key marginals which would then benefit Labour and other parties.

The problem now is that some people have become wedded to the idea of Brexit in an emotional and some kind of identity-defining way, like supporting your local football team although they are, quite objectively and manifestly, utter shit. Rather than realising that the decision was inherently flawed or coming up with an alternative, workable plan, they cling to fantasies of Britain returning to the days of being some kind of global powerhouse despite the socio-economic realities of the 21st Century making that flat-out impossible. This is why they resort to emotional screeches about "sovver-ren-tea", the "Blitz spirit" (presumably meaning that Brexit will be acceptable even if 40,000 people die in the process) and "going WTO like everyone else does" (no-one else does), because they don't understand the full range of issues affected. Their attitude to Northern Ireland shows an utter lack of comprehension of basic realpolitik, even though a post-EU Britain would have to engage with realpolitik in a much more frank and ruthless way than it has in the past (as we will not be able to afford any kind of moral or ethical considerations given our economic weakness outside of the EU bloc).

There are plenty of people who did vote Brexit who now regret their choice, which is good, and plenty of Remainers who have said they would vote Leave in a third referendum on the basis of respecting the outcome of the second (but not the first because reasons), which is laudable but misguided.

The same thing is going on in the USA, although that is tempered by some comfort from the fact that Trump lost the popular vote (so the majority of Americans do retain sense).

[polishgenius]

2 minutes ago, Philokles said:

To be expected. Promising result for the Customs Union and People’s Vote to come so close. 

It would be promising if we had a year or so, maybe even a couple of months.

It's not much use now. I hate them.

[Werthead]

21 minutes ago, Sophelia said:

I quite liked this tweet:

Gah - can't work out how to embed it, link here, quoted below:

"So if I understand the situation, Theresa May doesn't have enough support to resign successfully."

 

Pretty much. So May said she'd resign if it mean the deal got enough support to go through, the DUP shot her down, so now she will not be resigning.

This is beyond The Thick of It and Yes Minister territory. We're well though the looking glass now.

[polishgenius]

1 minute ago, James Arryn said:

I did not say what you said I said.

I have literally no idea why that came up as a quote from you, since I was replying to HeartofIce and was quoting him directly, but my bad.

[Heartofice]

Just now, Werthead said:

If you think they didn't know the connotation, I have a bridge over the Thames I would like to sell you.

 

You can keep the bridge and put it on your flat earth.

[Werthead]

9 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

You can keep the bridge and put it on your flat earth.

There are probably realities where this makes sense, but this isn't one of them.

[Philokles]

11 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

It would be promising if we had a year or so, maybe even a couple of months.

It's not much use now. I hate them.

Today was about finding the contenders for the next stage on Monday. To have two of the most sensible options that close is about as good as it was going to get.

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

There are probably realities where this makes sense, but this isn't one of them.

I was unfortunately implying that you sounded like a conspiracy theory nut job. Which is about the level this Grand Wizard  rubbish is hovering about.