Guaridna separates news from election soundbites but not in a binary

I could have it all wrong.Maybe the Gru is ironic through and through.Today they have this:

Brexit weekly briefing: election soundbites replace hard news

Mostly, it was all solid electioneering stuff, as it has been throughout the newspaper for months:

Best of the rest

• Brexit could weaken rules on antibiotics in farming, activists warn.

• Stressed Whitehall staff at ‘breaking point’ over Brexit.

• Voters’ choice is Tory no-deal Brexit or second referendum, says Gauke.

• Police assessing claims that Tories offered peerages to Brexit party.

• Roland Rudd exits People’s Vote amid continuing rancour.

• ‘CVs at bottom of pile’: Britons in EU say Brexit is taking its toll.

• Rising proportion of EU citizens in UK given temporary ‘pre-settled status’.

But there were some interesting more news-like (but still ideological)  nuggets too:

The EU launched legal action after Britain failed to nominate a candidate for the European commission, and the outgoing European council president, Donald Tusk, called on anti-Brexit campaigners to keep fighting in the run-up to the polls [isn't that electoral interference?] ....Somewhat embarrassingly, Tesla cited Brexit uncertainty after choosing Germany rather than the UK...Australia (backed by 14 other countries) demanded compensation for Brexit trade disruption.

Meanwhile,P Toynbee shows some signs of regaining perspective:

Time was when poverty was prime electoral turf. Labour struggles to push it on to the agenda, but it makes no impact on the Tories and their press. There’s no lack of brutal facts: in the last week alone the TUC reported that wages are still £20 below 2009 levels, with household debt at its highest. The Resolution Foundation finds the “jobs miracle” is due to poor people being driven to take on extra work. Fidelity says half of non-home owners now doubt they will ever own. The Trussell Trust reports the steepest rise in food-bank use in five years, while the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce finds four in 10 don’t believe they’ll have a decent standard of living in 10 years’ time – “the new normal”.

There is a party political point at the end though. Unlike G Brown (Blairite Remain Party):

There is no sign that Boris Johnson feels any need to pretend to be concerned

So he should pretend to be concerned? Meanwhile, S Moore puts a feminist case:

The looming general election offers fake binary choices – Corbyn or Johnson, leave or remain. Taking part is to bolster brokenness

We know binaries are the root of all evil and all that, and fake ones worst of all -- but aren't there at least 4 parties? Do all the binaries nestle together conveniently?

Moore puts her case and dignifies Grau perplexity:

it’s actually my right to vote for none of the above. To register my disgust.

Like many another Graunie, I suspect, she has argued herself out of any action at all because no saints are actually standing

Labour has a radical transformative programme. ...But I stand in solidarity with my Jewish friends and refuse the fake binary [!] of austerity v antisemitism....[Johnson is a] deeply unimpressive ego-driven mobster [who] stands for nothing....Jo Swinson in her possessed head-girl persona doesn’t float my boat, either.

So overall:

the mainstream media fails to reflect what is really going on, replaying all this as a simple choice and zombie party politics. Vote, everyone says. Get a large nose peg. Do the right thing. But what if the right thing is refusing the fake binaries [!] on offer? Voting now feels like clinging to the wreckage of a system we should dismantle. All the issues that really matter require cooperation, not silly, point-scoring conflict. 

Meanwhile, revealing problems with cooperation not silly point-scoring abstention, with T Meadowcroft:

Party politics didn’t come naturally to me. I was a twentysomething crypto-anarchist wastrel from the outer suburbs of Bristol who’d spent five years after university moving between jobs and getting distracted. Then, in 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave humanity 12 years to reorganise itself to limit climate catastrophe. A few months later, my son Finn was born.

Our future is safe in his hands. In terms of real politics, the Remain Alliance looked nice, but doubts emerged:

The obvious problem, to me, was that the alliance could end up hurting the remain cause as much as helping it. Polling expert John Curtice predicted immediately after details were released that there were “probably five or six seats” that might be turned over by the pact – but rather counterproductively it targets 10 pro-remain Labour MPs  ...Across the country, Greens like me now face the prospect of throwing our lot in with Jo Swinson, a leader whose green credentials include voting to sell off England’s forests, taking a donation from an energy company that owns fracking licences, and voting against slowing the rise of rail fares.

So he withdrew as a Green candidate, and Remain triumphed despite 'the planet' crying out for help, despite his great concerns for impending catastrophe, despite even his son being born. He even seems prepared to take a binary choice. What is it that produces such passion? 

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