Tory wreckers (deliberately?) threaten what is only common sense

Common sense to the Guardian/Observer means compromise talks with Labour to get a nice moderate cross party deal through. However, J Hunt has identified a slight snag:

[Hunt] “very much hoped” the talks would not end in a deal proposing a customs union....“I think there is a risk you would lose more Conservatives than you gain Labour MPs,” the foreign secretary said.

the triggers for most constituency chairs to sign the petition [for a vote on May's leadership]  had been the “humiliation” of holding European elections and May’s decision to enter talks with the Labour leader to find a Brexit compromise.

No doubt Guradinistas could then add to their betrayal myth a section on how constituencies in the Tory Parliamentary party also planned a fascist takeover all along? 

Meanwhile,P Toynbee offers hope to Labour Remainers:

Labour needn’t worry: in its northern heartlands, Brexiters are not the only voices 

Polly encountered one Brexiteer - inevitably an ' old man, as he harrumphed off up Kirkgate on his mobility scooter', but she also met others including some switchers:

Fed-upness with all politics, indignation at Westminster chaos, resentment at three wasted years of empty argy-bargy. A few people said they wouldn’t vote again in another referendum, they were just too disillusioned. “Bring back Guy Fawkes!” one man joked. Plenty of well-justified grudge; but there were plenty of switchers too. Resentful, not ode-to-joy converts, but weary givers-in to the realities, trade-offs and hard choices that were never revealed during the referendum.

She seems pleased with this weary resignation and passive acceptance. 

Toynbee knows 'You can cherrypick your vox pops to suit,' but insists:

this isn’t just wishful thinking from remainers. YouGov this month polled 5,000 Labour heartland voters in the north-east, north-west, Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside. Did these Labour voters back “a new public vote on whether Britain should leave on the deal negotiated or stay in the EU”? Three-quarters supported the idea, and 43% said that if Labour backed a vote they would feel greater affinity for the party. Only 8% said it would make them feel less keen on Labour; only 11% backed Theresa May’s Brexit deal. Labour never was the party of Brexit and it’s become even less so now. Don’t mythologise “northern working-class Labour man” when Brexit is overwhelmingly a Tory disease.

Nigel Farage says his Brexit party will be rampaging through Labour’s northern heartlands, but he may find less of a welcome from Labour’s voters than he reckons. His damp squib of a Jarrow march might be a warning...

The point is to brace up the Remainers tussling over the wording of Labour's manifesto, the issue that W Hutton described as 'civilisational' last Sunday:

Labour’s national executive committee today draws up its manifesto for the European elections: it’s a watershed moment, a make-or-break springboard or rack on which Labour will be judged for years to come. Members and voters need to hear an unequivocal, resounding pledge that any Brexit deal will be put to a confirmatory vote. Some will pretend the risk to northern seats means they must go on “respecting” a three-year-old vote, despite all polls for over a year showing a sizeable swing to remain, which is at least eight percentage points ahead now.

Then, puzzlingly,and seemingly contradicting the poll findings, Toynbee also  notes that:

Labour and Farage’s Brexit party are level pegging in the European election polls – a shocking fact that should send a thousand volts through the NEC.  

And, to no-one's surprise by now,  she turns nasty, urges polarisation and fights to the death in the usual distancing way:

Only Labour can beat off this wave of nationalist, anti-migrant, exploitative poison dragging the country rightwards. This will be a black-and-white confrontation between all Labour stands for and all Farage threatens. There is no leeway here for one foot in and one foot out of the Brexit camp....This fight against the Brexiteers is an existential struggle for the left’s core beliefs, for the spirit of internationalism, for cooperation on the climate crisis [work that in if you can], for binding democrats together against a hostile world, welcoming diversity and difference. On the other side beckons a nasty little-England dictatorship – the wild free-market world of Farage allies Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. Labour needs to step back from petty calculation and defunct anti-EU ideology to focus on the politics.

Guardina hysteria deepens into paranoia

Having already implied Farage is a fascist (below), the fight is renewed by M D'Ancona of the Graundian. It is, as always, a revealing criticism.

First, Farage is too clever by half:|

It is a grim reflection that no contemporary British politician better understands the networks, dynamics and ever-changing rules of modern politics than Nigel Farage....He is as effective as he is awful....Farage, since becoming leader in 2006, had transformed his party [then UKIP] from a marginal club of cranks obsessed by national sovereignty and the minutiae of EU directives into a cultural movement united in its fixation with, and opposition to, immigration...In so doing, he wrote the horrible script for the 2016 referendum [In his secret Brexit-cave,no doubt], in which his Leave.EU campaign acted as the provisional wing of the pro-leave cause.

We see with the last sentences the real sting. He is clever but also poisonous,even worse than the former hate figures. They were misguided [no doubt led astray by fiendish Brexit planners]  but still basically good chaps

 While Boris Johnson and Michael Gove promised bounteous trade deals, an NHS spending bonanza and a fresh start for the liberated UK, Farage poured poison into political discourse – most notably with his vile poster showing a long queue of Syrian refugees under the slogan “breaking point”. It was seriously nasty, and it worked.

Let's get really personal now:

Who is this man? A talkshow host, a spiv, [a real generational insult, straight from the 1950s family breakfast table]  a political groupie, a hanger-on – as likely to visit Julian Assange as Donald Trump. Watch his toe-curling performance talking to Steve Bannon in the recent documentary The Brink for a study in fidgeting awkwardness (Farage knows this is not a good look) mixed with irrepressible adulation (he hangs on Bannon’s every word).

Despite his old-fashioned spivvery, he is also somehow acquainted with more modern dark arts:

There are many facets to Farage’s success – he and many others of the populist right have been conspicuous beneficiaries of the 2008 financial crash. But his talent, I believe, lies in a deep, mostly instinctive grasp of political narrative and its operations in the digital era. Farage knows that simple stories, driven home relentlessly, can be spectacularly successful if they answer a collective yearning. Hence, his claim to have to “come out of semi-retirement”, answering a great historic calling, with a measure of reluctance but unfailing patriotism....This is, of course, ridiculous. Far from being “semi-retired”, Farage has been almost impossible to avoid since he stepped down as Ukip leader... the myth of the old soldier, returning from private life to perform one last service for England, is a good one – and he mobilises it well. 

No less resonant (and pernicious) is the great Brexit betrayal myth that Farage, more than any other politician, has cultivated – and since before the referendum itself. ...it was always baked into Farage’s rhetoric that if the public voted to leave, the elite would seek to thwart their wishes. The truth, again, is quite otherwise. The political class has strained every tendon to find a way of delivering the undeliverable [incrediblethat anyone could think that]: of extracting the UK from a 46-year relationship without wrecking its prosperity, security and access to the wider world [Heroes!]

Inevitably, D'Ancona has encountered a book that must be popular in his circles:

As Mark Lilla argues in his book, The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction: “Where others see the river of time flowing as it always has, the reactionary sees the debris of paradise drifting past his eyes.” Such a figure is animated by “the militancy of his nostalgia”, which, Lilla suggests, makes him “distinctly modern”.

Mark Lilla is a liberal professor who has criticised identity politics (must make him an uncomfortable bedfellow) but has seemingly swerved from academic study for controversialism -- see the Graun piece about him. 

Warming to his[?] theme, and perhaps echoing the popularity of apocalyptic warnings,  D'Ancona prophesies a dark future:

Brexit has failed because the square-circling task is impossible. We must stay, or accept a grievous cost: that is the choice now. But Farage appeals to a primal social instinct: the sensation that the few are, yet again, cheating the many of their unsullied dream. It is not the dream that is at fault, you understand, but those who sabotage it. Just as Marxists insist true communism has never been tried, so Brexiteers declare that their simple plan has been wrecked by weaklings, quislings and fools.[More than a hint of popular accounts of the rise ofNazism too, of course] 

It's been a conspiracy all along:

Brexit was designed by its most passionate supporters to fail: its purpose was to be betrayed, to enable a new movement to rise up, animated by fury and fear. Such a movement has now been born. It is already tearing the Conservative party to pieces. That, sad to say, is only the beginning of its plan.

Civilisation could end in 48 hours!

W Hutton in the Observer surveys the political scene with even more  anxiety:

Time has run out. Labour must seize its last chance to take a stand on Brexit

The party’s national executive committee has a duty to back a second vote to block the rise of hard-right nationalism

Is Labour to be the party of Europe in uncompromising opposition to the rise of an ugly, hard-right, English nationalism? Or will it continue to temporise over Europe, so enabling the centre of political gravity to shift towards the English nationalist right?

The temporisers think that:

The party must “respect” the referendum result partly to protect its “working-class vote” from the incursions of Nigel Farage’s English nationalists but also because the democratic outcome of the referendum demands it. Labour must certainly commit to a better Brexit deal than Mrs May’s, but a commitment to a confirmatory public vote on any deal can only be “on the table”, not a central plank of policy.

It won’t do. The right of British politics is becoming an amalgam of strident English nationalism, nostalgic xenophobia and hyper-Thatcherism hiding behind the language of anti-Europeanism that seeks to legitimise those ugly values. The ageing Tory party, already hostage to thousands of ex-Ukip members who have recently joined it, is being pulled magnetically towards Farage’s Brexit party.

Farage is the coming man. Hutton starts to see some of his appeal:

a no-deal hard Brexit and national “independence”, something so valuable, declares Farage, that if it means being poorer and internationally marginalised, so be it. [quite a popular view I would think -- anathema to the petit-bourgeoisie of course] It will allow the greater prize of England becoming the country he wants, home to a virulent capitalism and minimal social safety net; to a spirit of anti-immigration and indifference to inequality.

I love that last bit. As if we were gallantly standing up to virulent capitalism and pursuing equality at the moment!

Hutton's tea leaves reveal that:

If the Brexit party tops the European poll, be sure the Tory party will force out May over the summer and an English Eurosceptic nationalist, probably Boris Johnson, will take over, arguing for a no-deal Brexit for what is now the very hard deadline of 31 October.... Strategically, this new Tory leader’s aim will be to assimilate the Brexit party and its agenda; liberal one-nation conservatism will be torched. Such a leader will split the parliamentary Tory party and in the resulting general election Labour is likely to win. Some Corbynites even think that in strategic terms the more the 23 May manifesto can be fudged, the better. In Leninist terms [sic], it is one step back – a setback in the Euro elections by not fully opposing Farage – for two steps forward, a subsequent Labour general election victory.

Such cynicism is not for Hutton's pure,clean socialist[?] soul:

It is wrong on so many fronts. First, Britain is now joined in a civilisational battle of ideas and values [I thought that was G Bush's slogan?], recognised by party members and unions, if not some in the leadership. Labour cannot betray its core beliefs – the recognition and celebration of international interdependence in the pursuit of justice, solidarity and fighting climate change [get that last bit in] ; tolerance of the other and joy in diversity; commitment to equality and enfranchising workers – for a moment or in any election...If Labour is not explicitly for a confirmatory vote, its support will haemorrhage, now and in the future.

Hutton is surprised how ignorant so many contributors to the debate are:

Arguments about democracy and the case against English nationalism have to be confronted full on. There is nothing new in insisting that democracies must have the right to change their minds. The Athenian parliamentarian [really? --see his speech quoted in Thucydides] Diodotus argued in 427BC that as facts and arguments develop so democracies must revise their judgments – dismissing the counter-argument that it would cause division.  

Equally, Labour’s manifesto must link the case for Europe with a passionate [of course] case for reform: the two are indissolubly linked. Its 2017 general election manifesto is the nearest we have to the kind of transformative economic and social programme that will address the just grievances of so much of leave-voting Britain. But it is only fully possible within the EU

Meanwhile. the apocalypse nears:

There are 48 hours to stop Farage and all he stands for [Why? What happens on Tuesday night -- the deadline for publishing Labour's manifesto for the European elections. Civilisation itself turns on Corbyn approving the wording that talks of a confirmatory vote]. The country, as at other times in our history, needs Labour to do the right thing. [And what did it do at those other times?]

Labour jumps on bandwagon

The Observer splashes the news that Labour is backing the moral panic about climate change, thanks goodness. It is the only sensible way to unite Brexit northerners and remaining urban identity warriors --the latter have something else to do. Clever old Corbyn.

Corbyn launches bid to declare a national climate emergency

Labour will attempt to force Commons vote as it is revealed that the government has failed to spend anti-pollution cash 

 

Jeremy Corbyn’s party will demand on Wednesday that the country wakes up to the threat and acts with urgency to avoid more than 1.5°C of warming, which will require global emissions to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching “net zero” before 2050....The move will place Conservative MPs under pressure to back the plan, or explain why they refuse to do so, now fears over the combined problems of air pollution and climate change have risen to the top of the political agenda.

 

Above all, as a clincher:

 

The motion was welcomed by Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who has criticised the inaction of the world’s politicians. “It is a great first step because it sends a clear signal that we are in a crisis and that the ongoing climate and ecological crises must be our first priority,” she said. “We can not solve an emergency without treating it like an emergency.  

Uniting themes and rationalisations are also possible, so for moralists it's all one fight really, and they might even have guidance in rank-ordering their concerns (although they have never worried about that before) :

Lamy [Former Director of WTO] will say: “It is vital that any new trade deal or environment treaty between the UK and EU protects the region’s global leadership position on climate change. Without safeguardsto [sic] ensure strong continued cooperation and alignment, Brexit could destroy environmental protections – well beyond allowing chlorinated chicken imports.”

It's not yet settled for Labour though. There is this: 

Angry Labour activists threaten European election campaign boycott

Local parties angry over Corbyn’s perceived lack of support for second referendum

And this

As the local elections loom, Oxfordshire voters echo one theme: ‘politics is a farce’

Voters in Abingdon are weary with the trauma of Brexit and disillusioned with all parties

Virtue triumphs over reactionary dudes like R Scruton

Gripping example of the new moral authoritarianism in the Graud today (where else), and also another sign that the Great Virtue Signalling Display is moving on -- or perhaps back -- in its relentless quest to find somebody to culturally distance.

This time is is the issue of R Scruton leaving his advisory Government post because of nasty things he is supposed to have said. The debate is summarized by the redoubtable Z Williams:

following an interview with George Eaton that was published in the New Statesman magazine.... Eaton quoted Scruton on three subjects – immigration in Hungary, George Soros and China – and amid the fallout from the perceived racism of Scruton’s views as presented, he was sacked from his (unpaid) job as chair of the Building More, Building Beautiful government commission.

The razor sharp mind of Z Williams is alert to spectral evidence:

Scruton’s original complaint, that he was misrepresented by Eaton and his words were taken out of context, has now broadened. As he put it on the Today programme, he believes that “thought crimes are being manufactured” to hound conservatives such as him out of public life. This is plainly silly; the philosopher has been broadcasting his conservative views for years. He has long been part of an intellectual culture giving respectability to views at the farthest edges of acceptable race generalisation on the mainstream right, to no detriment at all to his standing.

The whole point of this silly view could be that this notion of thought crime is recent, of course, and is active despite the 'standing' of Scruton developed during a more tolerant age. But Scruton is already being found wanting by his 'giving respectability' to the mainstream right.I didn't really see that in his book on Kant but let that pass as a minor contribution and not the point here.

Williams wants to be fair:

Yet his more specific complaints about the interview do deserve examination. Eaton relays Scruton’s thoughts about China thus: “They’re creating robots out of their own people … each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing.” The transcript, when it was leaked under still mysterious circumstances, shows Scruton making a point about the conformity demanded by the authoritarian Chinese government, rather than denigrating Chinese people. This should have been made clearer.

So context is important here but also in what follows, but in a different way:

Scruton is on much thinner ice when he moves on defend his comments about “the invasion of huge tribes of Muslims from the Middle East” into Hungary. He was not, he says, calling it an invasion, or sorting anyone into a huge tribe on his own account. He was merely ventriloquising the legitimate concerns of the average Hungarian. They must feel like that, or they wouldn’t have voted for the hard-right scourge of refugees, Victor Orbán, right? This entire proposition is fabulously disingenuous.

Liberal thought police have never understood academic indirect discourses. Scruton's is an absurd generalisation,but it is far less clear that these are his own personal views. Nevertheless:

First, when you talk about groups of people in dehumanising, “tribes”, “floods” and “swarms”, when you turn reality on its head so that the most vulnerable people on Earth become a threat or an “invasion”, that has impact. To project those thoughts, post hoc, on to some imaginary “average person” doesn’t change the fact that it was you that said them [so indirect discourse must be banned] . Second, the notion of “huge” numbers of refugees is itself a figment of Orbán’s imagination, conjured up as a scapegoating device of the kind the far right has been using for time immemorial. The total number of asylum applications to Hungary last year was under 1,000. [ well, asylum applications is not the same as people actually arriving, of course,if we want to be sticklers on matters of unparenthesised fact]...There is nothing conservative about going in to bat for the falsehoods of a regime which gathers people into camps and starves them. This stuff is really pretty radical. [So it is Scruton not Orban that bears the responsibility. Was he 'going into bat' for him? Is he defending the policy of herding people into camps?]

On an even more gripping topic for those into the very latest cultural politics:

Scruton told Eaton: “Anybody who doesn’t think that there’s a Soros empire in Hungary has not observed the facts.” Murray said Eaton had wrongly failed to include in his write-up what Scruton said next: “It’s not necessarily an empire of Jews – I mean, that’s such nonsense.”

But Willliams sees through this denial and is is still out for conviction, if only by association:

But Scruton’s telling of the “facts” is itself partial [nice ambiguity] . Soros has been a hate figure for Orbán since 2018. [so does this contradict 'the facts'? The term is now in inverted commas, of course] His Open Society Foundation felt obliged to move from Budapest to Berlin. Conspiracies theories have been fabricated casting him as nefarious puppet master in chief. If Soros looms large in Hungarian society, it’s not because he has an empire, it’s because ancient antisemitic tropes are being reanimated in his name.[She just knows this].  Which isn’t to say Scruton is an antisemite, but when he plays into notions of Soros’s empire that are being used across the globe by the far right for antisemitic purposes, it doesn’t seem like the most rigid policing of thought crime to point that out.[Scruton is guilty because some other people also attack Soros, and they really are antisemites, so he must be contaminated. ANY criticism of Soros must therefore be condemned. Of course, both Williams and Thatcher were women...]

Williams just knows she is right because she is far more in touch with the zeitgeist:

Scruton, transfixed by the context and reception of his own remarks, [so naive, these philosophers] fails to consider the broader political context: refugees, Muslims in particular, are demonised, their numbers magnified and their hardships minimised for a purpose. Jews are demonised for the same purpose – the sowing of social division to serve an authoritarian agenda. It’s really nothing personal when we challenge these narratives of otherness; no malice is intended towards the bullied conservative.[Lovely -- and there's no evidence for personal attacks or campaigns, say to get Scruton sacked? Williams must know the context here, so surely she is as guilty as those blinkered intolerants who wanted him punished and for whom she has just gone into bat] It’s just that the principles of universal human rights [to which she has a privileged access, of course] – more than that, love, fellowship, solidarity – are more important than whether or not a reactionary dude gets to keep on chairing a commission.

I agree. The destiny of the Nation is more important than the personal freedom of reactionary elements! The national interests should dominate rather than the mere votes of 17.4m reactionary dudes

More signs of hope as the virtuous class warriors shift their attention to the climate*

G Younge sets out a path in teh Graun to guide us in the terrible dilemma now facing the woke activist wishing to signal virtue in the best way:

Farage and Extinction Rebellion: two politics of protest, only one has a future 

Younge begins with quoting a poem about the friendly face of fascism by M Rosen which he attaches to the sight of N Farage on the stump. He has no doubt about the aptness of the term:

The point here is not to insult – though those it describes will, of course, be insulted. [Closes the circle nicely --to argue back is to confirm] It is to offer the closest, most accurate [sic --from a casual glance, maybe of a TV broadcast!] description of the social base, rhetorical impulses and political orientation of those attending and addressing the Brexit party event...older, rural, exurban and provincial (they were white, too, though since this was Clacton, that is hardly an indicator). The collection of pinstripes, tattoos, Barbour jackets and tracksuits marks a crude illustration of the class alliances at play [the two groups the petit bourgeois despise most] . Rich and poor, brought together by a chronic grievance....You can smell the nostalgia on them...Whatever else they are, they are not racist. This point is declarative, not discursive – a statement made in response to a question that has not been asked and a point that has not been made.[although sly inferences and assumptions have been legion]  They insist on their own decency and persecution....there has never been much more to the driving force behind Brexit than this.

Luckily, they are a declining force:

they are galvanised by betrayal – betrayed interchangeably by all parties, the political class, the establishment and the parliament. This is an itch that can be scratched until it bleeds but will never go away. The country they mourn never existed; their place in the world, as Britons, white people, working people, posh people, [all the enemies] is not what it was and is not coming back.

Equally luckily, there is hope:

As Farage was winding up on the seafront, environmental protesters in central London were winding down. After almost two weeks of protests against inaction over climate change, Extinction Rebellion (XR) has announced that it will end its blockades.  

Both are radical, but only one has clearly shining virtue which can be signalled with the usual shifters:

To some extent they start in the same place. They view the political system as broken and accuse the political class of having let us down. They believe the status quo is unacceptable, drastic action is necessary, and the push to make things better will have to come from the outside. The similarities pretty much stop there. One is a group without a single leader that holds creative, joyous, disruptive protests that attract a span of ages, not least the young, with a view to building a new future. Its most prominent standard bearer, [self-elected?] Greta Thunberg, is a 16-year-old Swedish girl with Asperger’s. The other is centred around a garrulous 55-year-old Englishman, who in the course of several resignations has left his teeth marks on the spotlight, leading embittered, mostly older people with promises of a return to former glory....XR, like Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and the anti-war movement before it, has shown that there are significant constituencies for global campaigns that have humanism and international solidarity as their core [and they did so well, after all] .

For the bad guys:

The logic of Brexit is, in its essence, against any worldview. It seeks a retreat from the rest of the planet into an isolating pastiche of independence so that Brexiters might grab what they can for themselves. “If you want to see what Brexit will do for Clacton, just look out there,” Farage told the crowd, extending an arm towards the waves. “It’s called the North Sea – and half of it should be ours. Not to be shared with the Dutch or the Danes or anybody else. It’s ours.[Didn't he say only half of it was?]  It’s our birthright.” The sea, as any XR protester will tell you, belongs to all of us. Farage would welcome the fish that make it through. But God forbid a human being in search of food, work or refuge might brave those waves.

Of course, Younge's analysis is based on his reading of a poem on fascism, some observations on a (TV programme of?)  a hustings in Clacton and his own unerring moral compass that steers between those above and those below. If he had actually read some work on fascism he might have come across Critical Theory and its analysis identifying a major role for unfocused affect in arousing the sense of oppression and resentment, especially among groups like the middle class experiencing insecurity and risk for the first time.  One example of that sort of movement might be precisely XR and the other outpourings of emotional identity politics.

And one consequence has dawned on him, only to be rapidly left behind:

But the victories of Donald Trump and Brexit and the rise of the far right in general show that while these movements may be powerful, they are insufficient, in part because they have failed to convert mobilisations into electoral success

Backstop backfire

The Gruan has an item today about the proposed backstop in the May deal. But from an unusual angle. Some EU spokespersons are raising doubts about it too:

Brexit: Irish backstop could undermine EU standards, report says 

the backstop could in fact be...a brilliant deception device constructed by crack UK negotiators, which would allow a more reckless British prime minister to undermine the EU’s green and social standards while still keeping access to the European single market....To prevent Britain from diverting from EU standards on environmental or social protection after the backstop has come into effect, the customs territory would “include the corresponding level playing field commitments and appropriate enforcement mechanisms to ensure fair competition between the EU27 and the UK”...The new German report, however, warns that the wording of the deal means the EU side will find it impossible to stop a more aggressive Britain led by a Boris Johnson or a Jacob Rees-Mogg from flouting such standards while still being able to export British products into the single market....“If the EU wants to have a level playing field, it must not just set up the goals but also assign a referee,” said the author of the report

I must say I thought we had such a proposed referee, some secretive joint committee unanswerable to Parliament which would decide these matters. It's not enough for the paranoid, it seems:

a future government in London could in theory allow companies to self-regulate....“Even if there were an independent referee such as an arbitration panel, it is unlikely that such panel will ever identify a breach of the agreement on behalf of the United Kingdom because the objectives of the level-playing field clause have been defined in such an abstract way,”...

What exactly do they fear? Not a glut of cheap English strawberries, surely? No,even worse:

EU negotiators invoked the prospect of American chlorinated chickens, contaminated prawns or substandard Viagra arriving into the EU market via the UK – if the backstop was not watertight.

Presumably, it will be compulsory to buy these? And overall:

“The bitter reality for the EU is that the UK negotiated successfully in their interest to lower standards, limit freedom of movement but keep de facto market access,” said Franziska Brantner, a Green MP who commissioned the report.
If the UK’s main goal was to create a dumping zone, the British government certainly did a good job with the negotiations. But the question is whether lowering labour and environmental standards and consumer protection is actually in the interest of the British people. This deal shows the real intentions of the current British government.”

Marvellous implications follow. The deal should make it legally impossible for any Brexiteer to become PM after May? The Government of the UK will now become a permanent organ of neo-lib policies and so must have absolutely no say in any international discussions of standards? The only real solution is for us to revoke and let the EC decide what is in the interests of the British people.


Bureaucrats see no end for the need for tight regulation and no constraint on what they are entitled to do.

Kettle comes to the boil

GUadrina columnist M Kettle 's patience is at an end. God knows he has tried to compromise [really?] but the choice is now clear for Remainers -- PV.

There will be no soft Brexit now. It’s no deal or another vote 

It solves a dilemma for him as a liberal and Parliamentary democrat --how to get over the inconvenient result of the 2016 Referendum:

Ever since the Brexit vote in June 2016, many of us pro-Europeans have had to live with a dilemma. On the one hand, we regarded the vote to leave the European Union as a disaster for our country. On the other, we accepted the galling reality that it was the democratically expressed view of the majority...Until recently, my view could have been summarised as follows: Brexit remains a lamentable event I will always oppose; but, in the absence of public permission to overturn it, a softer version would be less bad than a hard one, and could provide the fragile basis for an eventual form of reintegration with Europe down the line.

Desperately though they tried through the winter, the hard Brexiteers failed to harden the original deal or take down May in the way they wanted. That left a space in the political centre. So, when May finally made an opening to Labour in early April, there was a possibility that a Brexit compromise was on the cards...But it hasn’t happened. The talks between the government and Labour continue. But they are not going anywhere

There are three big issues on the table in these talks. But there is no agreement on any of them. The first is over the terms of a future customs union and on single market alignment. The second, on which the two sides have had the biggest arguments, is on “future-proofing” any agreement against the next Conservative leader. The third is over the role, if any, of a confirmatory second vote.

That nice Mrs May is apparently prepared to compromise -- but not the old enemy, Corbyn.  Kettle's own 'compromise' would be for 'parliamentary support for soft Brexit in return for a confirmatory referendum, for instance – for which the circumstances cry out.', which pretty much looks like what he wanted all along rather than any sort of compromise.However, this obvious choice looks increasingly unlikely  now is the time for loin-girding and cudgel up-taking:

parliament’s efforts to take control of Brexit from the government have failed. In March, this sovereign parliament route [absolutely no irony here] seemed to offer a way forward. May’s deal was dead. Backbenchers came up with other cross-party ideas. The Speaker facilitated the process. Marches and petitions gave a feeling of momentum. When it came to the crunch, however, MPs knew what they did not want – no deal – but not what they did want...therefore...soft Brexit itself has also failed...soft Brexit must now be added to no-deal Brexit and May’s Brexit on the political scrapheap of the past three years.

Time for strong action and strong opinion leaders [GUardian journalists] to take control:

With no viable soft Brexit option on offer any longer, it has become meaningless to stand for a compromise that rested on the possibility that MPs and parties would strike a deal. The attempt to reconcile Britain’s place in Europe with the leave victory of 2016 within the Brexit process is therefore dead. It was killed by the hardline Brexiteers and by May’s rigidity. We pragmatic pro-Europeans [!] are therefore discharged from our dilemma....We are back to remain or leave, but now in their 2019 versions. The times will inevitably be very divided again. The effective Brexit choice will lie between no deal, promoted by May’s successor and much of the Tory party, and a second vote, hopefully but by no means certainly promoted by Corbyn, and by other parties too.

Parliamentary business as usual then, simply sidestepping that dreadful referendum result. 

Meanwhile, in other Guardian stories, first: 

Is buying vintage clothing the most eco way to shop? 

With Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Kim Kardashian spotted in vintage wear, and its increasing availability on the high street, it could be the answer to sustainable shopping

And 

'The need was there': Berlin's first vegan canteen for students opens

The great moving-on

More encouraging signs from one of el Gurdinano's leading zeitgeist surfers S Moore. 

The new climate change protest movements have challenged me...I live with an eco-warrior – albeit one who, like many teenagers, never switches the lights out.... They remind us that Brexit is one issue among many

Meanwhile less adept surfers  the Times stick to an old favourite theme, one of prime interest to this blog -- what is the case for Remain, should any new referendum appear?

  the nascent Remain campaign is miles off the pace. It’s not just disunited; it isn’t even sure who it’s supposed to be addressing....[never was,and cannot be,because it is entirely a matter of discrimination against Leavers]...

Some Tories wanting to join PV/Remain have encountered the floating nature of cultural identity politics. Remainers are equally likely to be aggressively anti-Tory, generational, pro trans and so on. Identity politics allows no compromises

Huw Merriman, so far the only Leave-supporting Tory MP who backs another plebiscite, identifies one of the group’s flaws. He put his government job on the line to join a People’s Vote rally earlier this month, only to endure a succession of opposition MPs denouncing his party from the podium with cheap political points. ...“There are more MPs like me on my side of the Commons but the People’s Vote campaign needs to change if it is to find us.” Key figures in the People’s Vote acknowledge the need to broaden their support.... [One Remainer has charted] the course ahead. It sails through “respectful engagement” of Brexit voters to “national healing” in a smooth, stately fashion.

 NO doubt cries of betrayal and sell-out will ensue. And there is still a problem:

immigration: then Remain Mk 2 hits the iceberg that sank the original. Cooper admits: “To get a People’s Vote off the ground there has to be some acknowledgement of the fears of many who voted to leave about uncontrolled immigration.” The solution? The referendum would be “an opportunity” for the UK and EU to “come up with some way of managing immigration better without compromising on the core freedoms [of the movement of capital, goods, services and labour].”...It’s hard not to read that sentence without hearing the simultaneous thuds of European leaders’ heads on desks and Nigel Farage slapping down a drained celebratory pint. 

Remain’s 2016 campaign was criticised for not having a positive, emotionally resonant message....floating voters then seemed more susceptible to messages about their individual welfare than their identity as Europeans, which is why there was such a relentless focus on the impact of Brexit on household finances in so-called Project Fear.

So back to the usual issues:

a second Remain campaign must find an “emotional connection” with Leave voters. Wondering aloud what it might be, he identifies voters’ unease that Britain’s standing in the world has been hit by Brexit. [However] The Leavers’ “Tell them again” slogan is so powerful that it could even win over some who voted Remain last time. Its message — if politicians get away with ignoring the will of 17.4 million voters, what else might they do? — boils down to a question of democratic principle....So what can neutralise it? The People’s Vote is mulling “Now we know”, a slogan designed to attract Leave voters while gently inviting them to consider the unexpected complexity and cost of quitting the EU. [Bridget Phillipson, a Labour MP helping the People’s Vote says]...It’s not that voters were misled, it’s just no one had any real idea what it would entail.” It’s a start, but one wonders if organisations like the People’s Vote would do better if they employed a few former Leavers in key positions and moved their headquarters out of Remain-voting London.

But there is hope:

any alternative to staying in the EU would have to be properly defined, trade-offs and all.[and Remain would not have to discuss the future of the EU?]...Second, Farage’s likely success in the Euro-elections will make it all-but-impossible to sideline him again.... Farage mops up the 25 per cent who are hardcore Brexiteers but is toxic to floating voters...perhaps most significant, is the passage of time. Last week’s Easter recess allowed the country to taste a “post-Brexit” future. The alacrity with which it fell on other topics reveals a deep yearning to change the subject

Overall:

What could beat “Tell them again”? Perhaps something that captures the sense that after three years of wrangling it’s time to move on. How about “Just make it stop”?

How positive and emotional is that!

The Guardian pleads for young middle-class victims of nasty comments

More encouraging signs of shift of interests among away from silly old issues like Brexit towards new ways of signalling virtuous support for he young petit-bourgeois. .M D'Ancona, speaker for the Soul of the GUardian,  starts with some classic stuff:

Those under the age of 35 tend (obviously, with many exceptions [let's not worry about those though]  to think differently from those who are older. As digital natives [oh dear] , their instinct is to form networks rather than to colonise institutions; they perceive the world in terms of identity and power structures rather than the categories of classical individualism; and they are more interested in transnational challenges (climate change, the pathologies of inequality, automation) than their elders, who still, for all their claims to the contrary, exist primarily within the silo of the nation state (see Brexit for details).{the link just takes you to general Guardian covergae of Brexit. Itmust all be simply self-evident]...Look all around at a new landscape of activism: not just Momentum, but the surging power of Black Lives Matter, digital feminism, social media campaigns against unethical commercial practices, and calls for citizens’ assemblies on all manner of issues.

Above all, there has been the phenomenon of Extinction Rebellion (XR). The campaign, it is true, was founded by people of my age or thereabouts: Gail Bradbrook and Roger Hallam have studied the science of social protest [pretty flimsy stuff] and developed what they call the “algorithms of rebellion”. But it is the young – and those that care about the future of the young [includes everybody after all?]  – who have given these algorithms such dynamic human expression in the past week. The nonviolent, peaceful, carnival spirit of XR has roots in the philosophy of Gandhi, the flower power of the 1960s, [both hardly digital activist]  and the determination of the Occupy movement. But the synthesis is arrestingly new....

Few except him can perceive the importance of the new synthesis:

More striking has been the media’s general inability to understand the XR uprising. Yes, it has caused inconvenience, for which the organisers have repeatedly apologised. Yes, some of the celebrities involved travel a lot by air. And yes, many of the protesters are middle class...But so what?...As for the social background of the demonstrators, who cares? Is there a means test now on morality?...this movement is more nuanced. It has grasped that the battle for the future will be, as much as anything, an information war: a struggle against post-truth, evasion and lies. It also insists that the present system of politics is not working.[So do others, of course,and D'Ancona has a twinge of doubt] Even as you celebrate the commitment of young people to the EU and to action on climate change, keep an eye on groups such as Generation Identity and the tech-literate far right: by all means applaud the spiritual descendents [sic] of Gandhi, but beware the children of Steve Bannon.

The triumphant conclusion?

What is certain is that the shift is real. For many of my generation, all this will be a rude awakening. But, like previous generations, we invited it in our failures, omissions and inaction [cringing liberal stuff] . What can I say? A change is gonna come [sorry? Channelling whom? Dylan?]

Elsewhere, C Bennett for the sister paper the Observer speaks up for the real victims in all this -- the middle classes. She is vexed and hurt (and no doubt feels very vulnerable now) after a Sky journalist rebuked a climate change protester:

“You’re like the incompetent middle-class, self-indulgent people and you want to tell us how to live our lives,” he told Boardman. “That’s what you are, aren’t you?”

Provocations and rants like this are common among liberal broadcasters on BBC Newsnight (especially the egregious and now departed E Davies) or C4 News (Ranting Guru-Murthy). They are defended, if at all, by claiming to be the sorts of things 'ordinary people' are thinking. Here, Bennett surfs the zeitgeist to tell us:

Waitrose slurs as signifiers are now as commonplace in episodes of intra-middle-class othering [nice -- I feel a paper or two coming on]  as “vegan”, “latte” and the increasingly popular in more snobbish parts of the far left “pearl clutching”. [ And the vulgar are not much better] “middle-class zombie tossers” (as a middle-class Sun columnist depicted protesters) and “delusional middle-class climate warriors” (according to a middle-class Mail writer) 

'Pearl-clutching'  takes us to a piece by L McCluskey in the Staggers defending Corbyn. I had to search quite hard to find the phrase and remain surprised that L McCluskey has somehow managed to speak for (or rather against) the Remainerati in such a powerful and memorable way. that C Bennett was hurt by it. The article also correctly predicted a split led by C Ummuna

We get close to the nub at last.It is the petit-bourgeoisie (journalist faction) she is defending against those above and below as ever. Perhaps she is also bidding for market share on behalf of the Graun/Observer and dissing the Staggers? Probably nothing as rational, but paranoia is catching. 

This time it is those above who get most flak.

 ...What makes “middle class” so obviously offensive to people such as Thomas Adam Babington Boulton?...parts of this vast and heterogeneous social group can be so unlike his own people, at the far, public-school, end of the middle classes.

NB the Google entry on C Bennett has this:

Catherine Dorothea Bennett is a British journalist. Bennett was educated at Lawnswood High School, Leeds, and Hertford College, Oxford. Bennett began her career in journalism at Honey magazine. Wikipedia

Born: 1956 (age 63 years)

Spouse: Robert Sackville-West, 7th Baron Sackville (m. 1985)

Education: Lawnswood High School, Department of Journalism, City University