You would think he’d know a few things having gone through a fine educational system, but it’s been reported that he bullshitted his way through an Oxford degree. His willingness to go into a “no deal” Brexit is incredibly reckless.
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We know exactly how the media would treat Corbyn if Brexit weren’t an issue, because it wasn’t for his first 9 months, and the unanimous reaction (deny, denigrate, ignore) has never wavered.
If he had become a single-issue anti-Brexit opportunist like Jo Swinson, I don’t think that would have made any difference. It is true that the media reject Brexit in much the same way they reject Corbyn, but it’s not a situation where they’d hold their noses and support one to stop the other. That idea fundamentally misunderstands their role and motivations.
The news business does not care whether we actually leave the EU, or whether the rich are actually made to pay taxes; it all fills the same number of pages. What they do care about is the perception that they tell the public how it is, and not the other way round. They don’t need to stop Brexit, they just need to prove that they were right about it. And it’s the same with Corbyn. And with Turmp for that matter. Their existence is threatened by anything that makes it seem like the orthodoxies they’re selling you are wrong.
Not all of their orthodoxies are wrong. But you have to make up your own mind.
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I’m NRS social grade E (disabled), grew up in Cumbria (My family was grade C1)and voted remain because leave always seemed like a stupid idea.
No one from the media ever seems to care what I think, presumably because I am not willfully ignorant.
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And life.
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It is if they see Brexit as a short-term problem to be addressed and Corbyn as a medium-term problem. But since Corbyn has also been effectively a Leaver all along, it’s a moot point. A Labour party leader who saw opposing Brexit as the existential issue it is for many British people might have given them the opportunity to approach things differently, but I think they understand that they’re screwed as things stand (watch them somehow pin it all on Corbyn in the end – that’s how they’ll reconcile things).
The corporate entities and the shareholders don’t care; neither do the C-suite executives and top presenters. The senior managers and correspondents and managing editors do care. And ultimately they’re an ornery bunch who’ll only follow so many orders from above.
The people who call the shots at the operational level may adhere to neoliberal-lite orthodoxies, but don’t worry one way or another whether multi-millionaires pay taxes – they aren’t that wealthy. They are affluent enough that they want relatively cheap French wine and cheese and Danish butter cookies and German pharmaceuticals; affluent enough that they want to have a dirty weekend in Paris without dealing with border controls; affluent enough that they want their kids to have school and career opportunities on the Continent. They don’t want to live in Little England or have to deal with the fallout of renewed Troubles.
Truly wealthy British people and corporations can and will be able to buy their way out of the problems that will be caused by Brexit; the merely affluent will feel the bite. Staying in the EU, whatever their economic orthodoxies, better suits their complacency (the same complacency that made a Leave victory unthinkable to them in 2016).
The last years of the 19th century through that first decade of the 20th seems to hit the sweet spot for conservatives everywhere in the West, what with the robber barons and extreme inequality and institutionalised racism and greater influence of religion. But I’m sure the British Tories will also borrow from earlier eras for their beloved debtors’ prisons and workhouses and various panopticons.
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Brexit is about deregulation. That’s it. A tiny, influential percentage of the population will make a great deal of money from it.
Now, removal of worker-, consumer- and environmental protections wouldn’t necessarily go down very well with the Great British public, so fortunately Brexit was sold as a way of keeping the forrins out, and ‘taking back control’ from those faceless bureaucrats in Brussels. It’s the will of the peepul, innit. Clearly many areas of the country that voted most strongly in favour of it are the least able to weather the profound social- and economic hit coming their way in the event of a hard Brexit actually happening. But, frankly, bollocks to them. You voted to make the UK an international laughing stock, and you succeeded. It’s just a crying shame you dragged the rest of us down with you.
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First. What does your neighbor think of Prince Edward?
Second: Please tell your neighbor that I said, “Hoot mon!”
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I wouldn’t be that kind; Johnson has a long record of extreme and overt racism stretching back decades.
Do the ruling class cynically manipulate racism for personal gain? Yes. Are they themselves sincerely racist? Also yes. The two are not exclusive.
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From Saturday’s Guardian:
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Similarly, from today’s, looking at the other side of the issue:
(The Graun tends to have a strong centre-left lean which usually favours the Lib Dems.)
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Twenty seconds on Google would have answered that for you, but here’s a handy summary to save you the effort:
Or if you prefer a video format:
https://twitter.com/redfishstream/status/1154050329068986371?s=21
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Why do you consider this a “meme” that has to stop. Cleverer people than me have provided evidence that it is fact.
Watkins J, Wulaningsih W, Da Zhou C, et al
Effects of health and social care spending constraints on mortality in England: a time trend analysis
BMJ Open 2017;7:e017722. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2017-017722
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/11/e017722
Cummins, Ian. “The Impact of Austerity on Mental Health Service Provision: A UK Perspective.” International journal of environmental research and public health vol. 15,6 1145. 1 Jun. 2018, doi:10.3390/ijerph15061145
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US States make their own laws - The Federal government (made of representives sent by the voters to a super-state parliament) implement Federal laws for them all to follow. For which they get a single market, freedom of movement and unified regulations.
Seems to be very much in the model of the EU.
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You can if only you’d stop voting for fuckwits like Farage.
Ha ha ha ha ha. Stop voting Tory, then.
The commission is neither. Do some research rather than believing what you read in the daily mail. The commission is stuffed with neoliberal fuckwits, true, but they accurately represent the elected governments that appointed them.
What are you smoking? How can being on the outside pissing in be more productive? Or did you mean to type “exploitative”?
But we did. Every law in the last forty-odd years was debated on and passed by the UK parliament. Anything we didn’t like (shengen, the euro) we passed on. Every single time.
You appear to be in the grip of a little Englander fantasy whereby the plucky Brits stood alone against the world and triumphed. Big news, mate, we had a massive empire that carried us for hundreds of years. Won us two world wars and made us a powerhouse of trade. That’s gone. If we want to succeed we need to join in with a supranational entity, and we now have a preferrential position in the world’s largest.
And besides, the process of leaving appears to necessitate handing absolute power to a bunch of greedy, unprincipled shysters who have spend the last ten years robbing us blind. If you’re down with that maybe you should take a good long look in the mirror.
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He says, “Sod all Royals”, whatever that means…
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Yeah, and they also carry opinion columns from people like Owen Jones and Paul Mason to demonstrate their open-mindedness. But that doesn’t counteract their overall bias; I’d argue it strengthens it, by helping their core demographic to feel like they’re not selling out by subscribing to what is, on the whole, an extremely pro-establishment outlook.
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Well then. Bob’s your uncle!
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Blimey! 
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I’m confused. The Daily Mail informs me that BoJo’s election becomes more assured every day (notwithstanding weak support for Brexit). So why would anyone be criticizing him?
