P Toynbee rebukes B Johnson and D Raab:
The ultras have sworn to hold candidates’ feet to the fire, binding them to vote against Theresa May’s deal and for no deal. As Dominic Raab tries to out-Brexit Johnson, watch the two vie to make the most extreme pledges. The party will opt for a no-dealer because that’s what the grassroots want. They think only a no-deal stand can stop Nigel Farage’s tanks rampaging on to Tory constituency lawns. They’re wrong, because whatever Brexit they deliver, nothing will stop Farage claiming a “betrayal by the elites”. It’s a revolutionary cry of shatteringly effective simplicity. [ could be spot on too, but leave that to one side]...[Johnsom] uses his Telegraph column for crude grassroots rabble-rousing, on Sunday attacking “cock-eyed crook-coddling”, with criminals “cosseted in spas” and “murderers let out to murder again”.
Surely, say people yearning for reassurance, wiser Tory MPs will prevent Johnson’s name reaching the last two for the party to select? No, that would take exceptional bravery, and there are only a handful of principled moderates left: three of the best skipped off to Change UK just when they were most needed in their former home.... the moderate One Nation caucus [prop N Morgan] would “work to stop any leadership candidate who endorses a ‘Nigel Farage No-Deal Brexit’”. Good, but she can only muster 60 MPs to block Johnson, while he has powerful backers: “It would be monstrous if Tory MPs deny Johnson his shot at Downing Street,” threatened the Mail on Sunday. Grassroots constituency chairs have fists at the ready and sleeves rolled if MPs fail to put their favourite on the ballot paper.
Toynbee examines the tea leaves and gets even more paranoid:
...at Halloween the UK is due to crash out [still an abrupt 'crash out', even after a 6 month delay] willy-nilly, without some deal agreed. The Calais border would clang shut [meaning what exactly -- no trade at all?] and so would the Irish border, firing up demands for a united Ireland referendum, with the Scots likely to follow suit with Indyref2 [more borders to clang shut then] ...Before 31 October, Labour would table a vote of no confidence and Tory One Nation MPs would back it to bring down their own government, and call an election. Seeing that inevitability, Johnson will surely call an election himself, shortly after reaching No 10. At risk of becoming the shortest serving prime minister of all time, he will be tanked up with vaunting hubris.. [and perhaps some good intelligence about voters?] Farage will bid to strip off Tory votes and seats (and some Labour ones too), [even after an allegedly Brexiteer Tory as PM?] while the Liberal Democrats syphon away remain and moderate voters. In the best scenario, the Armageddon that awaits may turn out to be the fate of Johnson and the Tory party for years to come, but not of the country as a whole....Expect an almighty row about an entirely avoidable setback when Labour’s bad results come in. Will the lesson be learned that facing both ways fails? With a general election likely, Labour cannot fight Johnson and Farage with a miserable semi-Brexit offer of renegotiation plus confirmatory vote
So what should Labour do? Something really positive? No -- get nasty and go negative to win back the petit-bourgeois: 'The Tories will slaughter themselves by electing Johnson. But Labour can only beat him by confronting all the lies he has told all his life about Europe.' Johnson is a liar -- so back Labour?
Z Williams tries to distract herself by researching whether or not any symbol will do to indicate a preference on the ballot paper:
Why, you might ask, in the lead-up to elections that the far right is already visualising as a famous victory, did I fritter my energy away in such idle research? [when you could have been doing -- what?] Utter frustration had a lot to do with it. [indeed]. Because imagine what the European elections would look like if you could signal – whichever party you voted for – that yours was a remain vote. Maybe it could be done through placing a star instead of a cross on the ballot paper. Or “a B with a cross through it”, as someone suggested to me, on the grounds that “nobody knows how to draw a star” [nobody knows how to draw a star -- things are really bad in Islington. Good job some Bolsheviks knew how to draw a hammer and sickle or the whole thing would have fizzled out!].
This would have prevented :
the threat of their vote being interpreted, post hoc, as a call to “get on with Brexit”. It could have galvanised the not insignificant body of Conservatives who are pragmatic remainers, and have thus been denounced as traitors by the suddenly dominant extremists within their party.
Assuming the spoiled papers would have been analysed of course. But now?
In the absence of that, what is to be done? A month ago I wrote that remainers had nothing to fear from voting Labour. Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s MEPs belonged to the party of European Socialists, and were therefore already signed up to the most visionary, transformative and radical manifesto the EU had seen since the earliest ambitions of its founders. Fourteen of Labour’s MEPs were allied to the campaign group Love Socialism Hate Brexit, and committed to a confirmatory referendum. ..But I had reckoned without the power of the “Lexit” faction, stuck in a fantasy world where the archetypal leaver is a working-class Labour voter of the north whose unchangeable and righteous wrath is more important and “authentic” than that of any remainer.
Williams listens to her inner voices [and maybe some outer ones over an agreeable dinner?]
The Labour candidates are the kind of representatives I would like to see populate the coming era of politics. They are pluralistic, imaginative, radical, ambitious, patriotic [patriotic and pluralist] . There are Greens I’d say the same about (Molly Scott-Cato, for instance), but to live in London [!] and not vote for a slate I think should be at the heart of the party’s future seems absurd. [Also] someone needs to oppose Nigel Farage, and that will come much more convincingly from somebody with a track history of fighting racism – Clive Lewis, say – than it does from a clubbable Lib Dem....the [Labour] party is moving [towards CV/Remain]...Voting Labour will be an act of faith, trusting it to resolve itself as the natural party of remain. But there are voices within the party who justify what is, essentially, a Tinkerbell manoeuvre [!]: they’ll only prevail if you believe in them.
And the sketch writer, J Crace covers the more remote possibilities with some early card-marking:
Esther McVey’s 15-min launch was hopefully the last we’ll hear from her leadership bid
Meanwhile, el Graun is not one to let the really vital issues slip unnoticed:
Why Bella Hadid and Lil Miquela’s kiss is a terrifying glimpse of the future
An advert featuring the human and virtual models is late-capitalist hell, ‘queerbait’ and digisexuality all at once
No comments:
Post a Comment