The criminal shitshow that is British politics continues, with a Tory leaderships contest, ultimately to be decided by a handful of elderly misanthropes, following Theresa May’s resignation. Currently, the bookie’s favourite is serial liar and buffoon Boris Johnson, a man who makes Donald Trump look like a model of virtue and who is now holding out the prospect renegotiation with the European Union, in violation of the agreed terms of the recent extension, followed by the no-deal exit which the Tory undead wish to foist on the country’s youth. In between we have the prospect of European Parliament results, where the largest share of the vote will probably go to Nigel Farage’s alliance between the right-wing Christian evangelism of Anne Widdecome and the paedophile-excusing ex-Revolutionary Communist Party.
Still, as an hors d’oeuvre, Theresa May’s resignation speech wasn’t bad. She appealed to the spirit of Nicholas Winton, who saved thousands of children from the Nazis just before the Second World War by organizing the Kinderstransport, which necessitated, among other things, the falsification of papers. Under Theresa May’s regime, Winton would have faced prosecution and a lengthy stretch inside for people smuggling and those he saved would have been left to their fate. As Home Secretary and Prime Minister she has presided over the most refugee-hostile government of recent times, with child refugees stranded and separated from their families and those refugees who make it to the UK forced to subsist on £5 a day. Many other migrants have had their lives destroyed under May’s “hostile environment” regime that has split families, increased racial discrimination in housing, and has seen foreign students falsely accused of cheating and removed in their thousands with the loss of all their money and reputations. And the system of indefinite detention for thousands of migrants continues. These are, of course, just the charges that come to mind, there are many others. But she cried from self-pity and tried to wrap herself in the mantle of a modern saint.
{ 31 comments }
nastywoman 05.26.19 at 10:27 am
”But she cried from self-pity and tried to wrap herself in the mantle of a modern saint”.
But as even Russel Brand -(who I can’t stand) registered – we now have neutered the stage where (hopefully all) these “hostile environment-regime operators” become the victims of the systems they have created – and so I’m looking very much forward seeing
somebody like ”the serial liar and buffoon Boris Johnson” completely dismantling himself.
As it will show more and more people that there is no other chance in (British) Life than a openminded and ”non-nationalistic European” future.
And – thanks – as I REALLY was waiting for this OP –
(and May’s tears)
Tim Worstall 05.26.19 at 10:27 am
Leaving the politics aside as we’re most unlikely to agree upon that. And few of us are going to praise That’s Life or Esther Rantzen. Yet re Winton there’s one truly great piece of TV:
Matt 05.26.19 at 11:12 am
…and a lengthy stretch inside for people smuggling…
If there was one term I could ban, as absolutely hopeless and harm, from the legal lexicon and law books… well, maybe it wouldn’t be “people smuggling” – maybe there are even worse ones, but it would certainly be in the top 5 or 10 and has a good shot at number one. So many different sorts of acts – with obvious different moral valiances – are grouped under this term – from tricking people into sexual slavery, to indentured servitude, to helping one’s close friends or relatives while crossing the border illegally, to providing indirect or immediate aid to people seen to be in need – that it’s just of no use. It really needs to be replaced by a number of more careful descriptions. One hopes that, when that was done, many things that currently fall under the heading of “people smuggling” would be properly seen as not worthy of criminalization at all. In any case, as I always tell the students in my immigration classes, when you hear a politician or enforcement officer talking about “people smuggling”, hang on to your wallet because there is a very good chance that some serious slight of hand is about to happen.
wal64 05.26.19 at 7:07 pm
Matt @3: Well put on “human trafficking”, “people smuggling”, etc. It’s a classic “moral panic” and a nice career move, what with so many interests–Anti-immigration, Law-enforcement, Religious types, etc.–aligned, for “Social Science” practitioners:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Study-313-000-Texans-are-now-human-trafficking-10881391.php
http://sites.utexas.edu/idvsa/files/2017/02/Human-Trafficking-by-the-Numbers-2016.pdf
Laura Agustin is a voice in the wilderness in pointing out how ridiculous the numbers bandied about with abandon are, but as you can see from the talk she gave at University of Texas it all falls on deaf ears as the person who followed her talk seems to be living in an alternate reality.
https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Margins-Migration-Markets-Industry/dp/1842778609
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61itYbq-x2I
Nutty as libertarians are, like a broken clock on rare occasions they can give the right time:
https://reason.com/archives/2015/09/30/the-war-on-sex-trafficking-is
Declan Kenny 05.27.19 at 9:29 am
Nice piece. The view from abroad (i.e. Ireland) is interesting. Needless to say, the shops here sold out of schadenfreude months ago on the Brexit issue, but as time went on, people started to show a strange form of respect for May, largely from witnessing her having to spend her short time in the spotlight cleaning out an Augean Stables of Shite created by her predecessor. I concede that’s an anecdotal response but I don’t think I am too far wide of the mark.
Of course, what we miss are the day-to-day issues. Unless you follow British politics closely (I am half-English), you will not pick up on those issues (like Windrush). They don’t cross the Irish Sea like Brexit, for obvious reasons.
It’s a dreadful back-handed compliment, but she seemed to be the best of a bad lot. Or, let’s call her Sisyphus (seeing as I am on a roll with the classical references…)
John Hulla 05.28.19 at 1:24 am
The only substantiative difference between Johnson and Trump is that one of them has the wig on backwards. At the time, a relative of mine described the economic and political structure of the US/UK special relationship as the ‘unholy love child of the romance between Regan and Thatcher, conceived in their passionate surrender to the wonders of the free market. Just as tilting the playing field to the rich led to Trump in the US, I fear the conservatives in Britain, especially Cameron and May have followed the same immigrant bashing, jingoistic and racist road to power in the UK as seen in May’s tenure as Home Secretary with its ‘hostile environment’. Prime Minister Farage, anybody?
John Quiggin 05.28.19 at 5:29 am
Following the EU elections, Corbyn has called for a second referendum, though still not an immediate one, it seems. And it now appears, as May has said, that the only choices will be No Deal and Remain. Even after all this craziness, I find it hard to believe that a majority of voters will go for a No Deal exit.
HcCarey 05.28.19 at 5:42 am
Check me if I’m not getting this right from the US. The biggest gains were by parties that articulated remain as their position, but there are several of these, so the biggest single gain is Farage’s party. Arguments that a majority support remain are now stronger, but Farage has a trump like ability to make himself the center of press attention. Particularly striking here are the gains made by the SNP and the alliance party in Northern Ireland. Scotland and NI really don’t want to leave.
The pathetic majority parties are divided, and tell me if I get this right: the Tories have a set of xenophobic leavers like Rees Mogg, but then they’ve also got lots of financial services jerks for whom rapacious capitalism works best when capital and labor flows are unimpeded. These people want to remain. Labor has lots of xenophobic voters who hate the idea of Romanian plumbers and attribute economic decline to Europeans with their odd hostility to boiling vegetables properly, for 2o minutes. And it has lots of people who blame economic decline on thatcher and the tories, which seems right to me, and who want to remain because they think the future for England’s working class is their kids getting jobs in the EU or EU investment in England.
Either labor or conservative could prevail, it seems to me, if it doubled down on remain. But neither of the two parties can bring itself to do that, because it means abandoning a traditional part of their core constituencies. Of the alternative parties, Farages party is the strongest because he’s still peddling simple messages and unicorns.
The moment should belong to labor, and it should remake itself the image of remain. But that’s not going to happen.lame leadership, but also all the labor brexit voters would go to Farage. And the Tory remainers have the same anxiety:Farage will Hoover up all their xenophobes. The smaller remain parties re dividing the majority remain vote. Am I more or less right here?
Dipper 05.28.19 at 6:41 am
@HcCarey you are not getting this right.
It is stalemate. Roughly a third ardent Leave, a third ardent Remain, and a third not sure/don’t care. Remainers have been saying they won the election but they have been doing some strange contortions to up their numbers; before the vote, they said that Remainers should vote Lib Dem as Labour was not a Remain party (which many of them did). After, they are counting Labour as Remain. Other parties such as Green and SNP have main policies which are not explicitly Leave/Remain but are Remain too, and are counting all their votes as Remain which is certainly not true of the SNP for instance. In contrast, The Brexit Party has literally one policy.
I would suggest refraining from simple lazy stereotypes of Leave voters. There were Brexit Party candidates from Asia, Africa, and Malaysia amongst others, in contrast to the last European Parliament which was almost exclusively white. Writing off large sections of the UK electorate as too stupid and bigoted to be trusted with making decisions is how we got into this mess in the first place.
John Quiggin 05.28.19 at 8:13 am
@Dipper Stalemate is not an option: what’s left at this point is No Deal or Remain. And, if Boris Johnson is PM, it could be a literal No Deal, with the Continent isolated: hardly any trucks going either way, minimal air travel and so on.
Dipper 05.28.19 at 9:10 am
@ John Quiggin
Stalemate is just electorally where we are, not a recommendation.
One of the reasons why the whole EU debate has become so toxic is because it projects what is an ongoing issue onto a binary in/out event. This is a bad way to do politics. Important relationships need constant management, not just a yeah we decided that years ago approach.
“hardly any trucks going either way, minimal air travel and so on.” that’s right because no planes from outside the EU ever fly into an EU state. That’s why there are literally no Australians or any Australian produce anywhere in the UK.
nastywoman 05.28.19 at 9:29 am
”Stalemate is not an option: what’s left at this point is No Deal or Remain”.
How true – with the addition – that I really – after May – would like to see Boris Johnson to do the:
”I – WE – and not even Sisiphos – can’t divorce the UK from the EU anymore.
It probably would make a lot of his friends and family finally give up the effort too?
Peter T 05.28.19 at 11:22 am
Dipper
All electorates are too stupid and bigoted to be trusted with decisions, else we would not have Trump, Morrison, Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Bolsonaro…Unfortunately elites no less stupid and bigoted, so that’s where we are. It’s less about making non-stupid decisions and more about correcting for the stupid ones.
HcCarey 05.28.19 at 11:59 am
It doesn’t look like a stalemate to me: it looks like inertia. I suspect a new vote would lead to a win for Remain–the polls seem to bear this out, as do the election results. But Labor and Conservative are trying to hold onto their identity by kicking the can down the road in hopes that a magic solution will appear. You can say a third of the electorate are indifferent or don’t care: that would seem to me to put them in “remain,” since they’re indifferent or don’t care.
Orange Watch 05.28.19 at 12:49 pm
Dipper@11:
That’s right because no states from outside the EU ever established trade deals with the EU… right? Just as “Brexit means Brexit”, No Deal means No Deal. Your sarcastic rejoinder elides entirely the actual issue at hand.
Orange Watch 05.28.19 at 12:50 pm
(In favor of magical thinking and unicorn hunting, I might add.)
Dougd 05.28.19 at 1:40 pm
11: ” it projects what is an ongoing issue onto a binary in/out event”
David Cameron is on the line for you from 2015. Any advice?
Hidari 05.28.19 at 4:07 pm
@8 ‘Scotland and NI really don’t want to leave.’
Scotland and NI (and to a much, much lesser extent, Wales) ‘really don’t want to leave’ the EU.
Leaving the ‘United’ Kingdom would seem to be something they are increasingly sanguine about.
Guano 05.28.19 at 4:14 pm
After the referendum and on becoming PM, Theresa May appears to have decided that there was an opportunity to attract to the Conservative Party voters who had voted “Leave” but were not natural Tory voters: she had in mind holding a General Election in 2017 after making some speeches repeating Brexity talking points. Thus the speeches to the Tory Party conference in late 2016 and the Lancaster House speech, which cemented in the minds of some Leave voters the fantasy that it would be possible to negotiate something with the EU that would still give frictionless trade with the EU while opting out of all the institutions (SM, CU, CJEU) that were developed to facilitate frictionless trade. Unfortunately for May, the number of voters at the General Election who were attracted to this vision was less than the number of voters who deserted her, she lost her majority in parliament but she had created a strong impression with some people that anything less than “having cake and eat it at the same time” would be a Bad Deal. The last two years have been wasted while the Tories argued about how to deal with the Irish border issue and whether or not to renege on the Good Friday Agreement. And in the end she resigned, the victim of a tragedy of her own making.
The question is – if she had achieved a large majority in the General Election in 2017, would she have been able to negotiate a deal with the EU and get it through parliament?
My own view is that, at some stage, the same problem would arise. At some stage there would have been a collision between what a section of the electorate have come to believe and reality. Nigel Farage would still have been in the wings calling “Betrayal” if the fantasy couldn’t be achieved.
It is unclear to me how many people really want a Soft Brexit for its own sake – ie leaving the EU and avoiding economic chaos. For the last three years, there have been people who supported that position because it was purportedly what Vote Leave campaigned for and they accepted the results of the referendum. Now it is clear that really what they do want is to plunge the UK into chaos – so is it worthwhile respecting the results of the referendum?
nastywoman 05.28.19 at 4:17 pm
@ Dipper
”Important relationships need constant management, not just a yeah we decided that years ago approach”.
How tremendously true –
That’s why we – nearly my whole family – will -(again) celebrate one of our most important birthdays in the wonderful country of the Dippers –
together with Queen Anne – at the same day ”the other Queen” – who hopefully will tell Clownstick – again! – to behave – will have to sit through a dinner with a guest nobody in ”Europe” really would like to have.
And that’s the thing – as long as long as Britain is willing to dine and wine Von Clownstick with a Queen affair – we need – absolutely need to keep this beautiful monarchy in the EU.
Especially since Meghan – and did I tell you guys that I witnessed her Royal Wedding in Bath -(at ”the Circus”) and sometimes I think if we even manage to get more of our relatives over to ”the island” and celebrate together with all of these ”Dippers” and ”Dipperettes” – they finally will completely turn around and tell each other:
We can’t leave this fun people!
What would we do without them?
J-D 05.29.19 at 6:29 am
By that logic, it’s a bad idea for any state which is not part of an international organisation to consider joining that organisation, because that has to be a binary in/out choice, but on the other hand it’s equally a bad idea for any state which is part of an international organisation to consider leaving, because that too has to be a binary in/out choice. Is that actually your position? What have I missed?
As I understand it (and please do correct me if I am wrong), currently planes fly between EU member states and Australia in the context of a legal framework created by agreements to which both the EU and Australia are parties, and which will presumably continue to exist after a UK departure from the EU.
On the other hand (again, subject to correction), currently planes fly between the UK and other EU member states in the context of a legal framework created by their common membership of the EU, a legal framework which will presumably cease to exist after a UK departure from the EU.
praisegod barebones 05.29.19 at 11:15 am
nastywoman @ 12
“It probably would make a lot of his friends and family finally give up the effort too?”
I don’t know, nor do I wish to know, much about Johnson’s friends. But his siblings include Jo Johnson, (one of the more pro-EU Conservative MPs); Rachel Johnson, who stood for Change UK in the European elections; and Leo Johnson, who I think is a Green.
Barry 05.29.19 at 2:01 pm
Guano: “It is unclear to me how many people really want a Soft Brexit for its own sake – ie leaving the EU and avoiding economic chaos”
I’m not sure what this means. Do you mean that leaving the EU would avoid economic chaos, or that the departure should be such as to avoid economic chaos in the departure?
Stephen 05.29.19 at 5:05 pm
J-D@21
“Presumably” is not a very strong qualification; “subject to correction” is wise. See
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/flights-protected-in-no-deal-brexit-scenario
J-D 05.29.19 at 11:53 pm
Stephen
The webpage you cite explains that arrangements are being made so that a new legal framework will come into operation when the UK leaves the EU allowing flights between the UK and the EU to continue. There’d be no need for such arrangements if it were not the case that the existing legal framework will cease to operate, which is evidence that my original comment was correct. (It is also evidence that John Quiggin was not correct to suggest that there’s a serious risk of air travel being reduced to a minimum, although only because such a risk was anticipated, in the original sense of the word.)
Cian 05.30.19 at 1:00 pm
John Quiggin: Following the EU elections, Corbyn has called for a second referendum, though still not an immediate one, it seems. And it now appears, as May has said, that the only choices will be No Deal and Remain. Even after all this craziness, I find it hard to believe that a majority of voters will go for a No Deal exit.
Oh dude… Unless the remain campaign can pull their heads out of their arses prepare to be very disappointed.
Cian 05.30.19 at 1:13 pm
But Labor and Conservative are trying to hold onto their identity by kicking the can down the road in hopes that a magic solution will appear. You can say a third of the electorate are indifferent or don’t care: that would seem to me to put them in “remain,†since they’re indifferent or don’t care.
1) I have no idea how Labour’s identity is any way connected to EU membership. The conservatives yes, Labour no.
2) Labour are the “Opposition Party” and so are unable to implement a solution. I am amazed by how many people ignore this very basic fact.
3) They have a proposed solution, and one which they discussed with the EU (who signalled they were open to it, though again this was largely ignored by the British press). It’s basically a norway style solution.
Also, Labour’s position prior to the EU election was the same bloody position as most ‘remain’ campaigners are the referendum. Which was – we lost, we have to implement the damn thing, let’s do the softest Brexit possible. I’m not sure at what point Brexit became a culture war purity thing, but I suspect it is somehow related to Corbyn Derangement syndrome. Most of the people currently shouting at Labour proposed exactly the same policy two years ago.
Cian 05.30.19 at 1:40 pm
HcCarey: Check me if I’m not getting this right from the US. The biggest gains were by parties that articulated remain as their position, but there are several of these, so the biggest single gain is Farage’s party.
Here’s the thing that apparently no British political journalist (other than Stephen Bush at the New Statesman) seems to know:
1) EU elections are ALWAYS used by the British electorate as a protest vote (smaller and single issue parties do disproportionately well)
2) Turnout is very low. As far as I can work out it was around 36% for this election. That’s around half the normal turnout.
3) This election seems to have been treated as a referendum on EU negotiations by almost everyone who voted. Would that translate to a general election, nobody really knows but history suggests not.
Particularly striking here are the gains made by the SNP and the alliance party in Northern Ireland. Scotland and NI really don’t want to leave.
Well that segment of those populations who could be bothered going to the polls anyway.
The pathetic majority parties are divided, and tell me if I get this right: the Tories have a set of xenophobic leavers like Rees Mogg, but then they’ve also got lots of financial services jerks for whom rapacious capitalism works best when capital and labor flows are unimpeded.
Nope, you didn’t get this right. It’s complicated, but for a start you have to be clear whether you’re talking about MPs, Tory party members, people who vote Tory, or people who’ve traditionally funded the Tory party (but who are currently refusing to do so). They’re different groups, with different interests/beliefs. Even the city is divided. Hedge funds and the offshore industry seem to largely support Brexit, other parts of the city (including “financial services jerks” such as Insurance, trade finance and contract lawyers) do not. Industry (what’s left of it) mostly doesn’t support Brexit either, as it’s going to destroy their ability to participate in supply chain manufacturing.
Tory party membership is dominated by old, petty bourgeoise, people who have an ideological hatred towards the EU. That hatred was created by a combination of things, including the UK press.
Labor has lots of xenophobic voters who hate the idea of Romanian plumbers and attribute economic decline to Europeans with their odd hostility to boiling vegetables properly, for 2o minutes.
Do you have anything to offer other than dodgy stereotypes and disdain? No, these things are not true. It’s complicated. Snobbery is not helping the remain case, and may explain why the country is still split on this issue.
And it has lots of people who blame economic decline on thatcher and the tories, which seems right to me, and who want to remain because they think the future for England’s working class is their kids getting jobs in the EU or EU investment in England.
The first part is right, the second is not really correct. A lot of them don’t really care because they think other things are more important, others are opposed to it because Tories and for others it’s become a culture war thing. I have yet to meet anyone who thinks the future for England’s working class is emigration to the EU – but maybe I know the wrong people.
Either labor or conservative could prevail, it seems to me, if it doubled down on remain.
Err, no. The Tories would self-destruct. Not even sure how you got to that conclusion. Labour will struggle because – and I know this is hard for a lot of people to grasp – not every remain voter is a Labour supporter. Politics is about more than a single issue.
But neither of the two parties can bring itself to do that, because it means abandoning a traditional part of their core constituencies.
Also known as not winning power. An odd thing for political parties to worry about, but there you are.
Of the alternative parties, Farages party is the strongest because he’s still peddling simple messages and unicorns.
Well that and the fact that he was the only one pushing Brexit (by literally calling his party ‘Brexit’) in a single issue election that nobody cares about very much.
The moment should belong to labor, and it should remake itself the image of remain.
I mean the fact that the party, including it’s MPs were split on this issue could have been a barrier to this. People talk about this as if it was Corbyn’s decision. It wasn’t – it was a consensus decision made by a very divided party. I realize that none of the press (other than Stephen Bush – who is probably the only political hack worth reading TBH) seem to understand this, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
But that’s not going to happen.lame leadership
Said lame leadership having prevented Brexit so far and helped bring down May – but do go on. What the hell have Remain done, other than harden the Brexit block so that it’s become ‘Hard Brexit’. Solid tactical gains by those boys and girls.
but also all the labor brexit voters would go to Farage.
I mean sure – they do need to win in order to implement Remain. That would seem to be a political reality that they, but apparently none of the unicorn lovers in the Remain campaign, have to do deal with.
The reality is that Labour were trying to thread the needle on a divided issue (divided in their party and the population), on an issue they don’t care that much about (for some reason the party thinks that US style levels of poverty and inequality are more important concerns), by crafting a compromise. The Remain campaign has decided to make Brexit a purity test (a lot of this I think is driven by irrational hatred of Corbyn), and so have moved from their initial ‘soft brexit’ position (which is/was Labour’s position – not that anyone seems to have bloody noticed) to ‘ONLY REVOKE WILL DO’.
And so now the UK has US style cultural politics going on. Which is bloody marvelous. Well done everyone. Great job. I think that basically no matter what the outcome EU obsessions are going to poison political debate in the UK for decades.
novakant 05.31.19 at 10:52 am
Cian, you’re of course free to ignore the majority of Labour MPs, members and voters. And you can also take Remainers for granted while sucking up to Leavers. But this will gravely harm the Labour party in the medium term, as the young generation is fervently for Remain and will not forget this.
Maybe someone in the Labour leadership should have had the guts to say that Brexit is a terrible idea and should therefore be stopped. But the truth is that Corbyn wants Brexit to realize his socialism in one state dream.
Cian 05.31.19 at 12:53 pm
@novakant:
A majority of Labour MPs did not want a second referendum. They wanted a soft Brexit. The same is true of the membership. This has been obscured by all the push polling by the remain campaign (e.g. polls that ask what do you want – rather than given where we are what do you think the best approach is), but that doesn’t change the fact.
Labour policy on Brexit was formed at their conference last year. They have followed it to the letter. It was a compromise position for the simple reason that the party is divided. It’s certainly not something that was pushed by the leadership. There’s also been considerable unamity in the party on this approach. For example Yvette Cooper has been strongly committed to it (who helped formulate it) – hardly a Corbynite. My suspicion is that in so far as the leadership of the party has a position on this – it’s that they wish it would go away.
Now you can criticise this strategy – though it’s hard for me to take any criticism from the remain campaigns on tactics seriously at this point – but that would require first recognizing that it is an approach designed to minimize damage. In other words the Labour party recognized that the referrendum had been lost, and whatever they thought about that, they had to recognize that political fact and deal with it. This contrasts to the remain campaign which has essentially been a purity program. They don’t actually have a bloody strategy.
But the truth is that Corbyn wants Brexit to realize his socialism in one state dream.
Which probably explains why he has been patiently pushing a Norway style deal and negotiating with Europe about a Norway type deal. A deal which would basically like being in the EU, only the UK wouldn’t have a voice on policy. I’m sure this also explains why the Labour party is strongly opposed to hard Brexit – which is presumably the only way he would get this Soviet dream state. I mean seriously – what has Corbyn done in your opinion to try and make this “dream” reality?
Guano 05.31.19 at 3:06 pm
Replying to Barry – number 23.
I mean “leaving the EU in a way that minimises economic chaos”. My question is whether there are really many UK voters who want that for its own sake or whether it is a compromise that some voters thought would satisfy everyone. Possibly it is now a compromise that will satisfy nobody.
Replying to Cian
I agree with a lot you say but unfortunately I think that the culture war has already arrived. There is a large bloc of voters who have been reading the tabloid press for years and have decided that the EU is an evil empire that has to be left at any price – and another large bloc who perceive the EU as a set of institutions that the UK joined voluntarily and whose rules the UK helped to shape. As it stands, I don’t know how that gulf can be easily bridged. Events have moved on and a compromise position may be no longer useful – much more active measures of dialogue may be required to maintain electoral coalitions that have different attitudes to Europe.
Comments on this entry are closed.