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I think we are way past the point of satire being dead.

Now denied.

Oh no. I was really looking forward to the political cartoons of Boris VS Stalin Putin.

We should get some good ones out of Gove stabbing him in the back.

For those not following the minutiae of the Tory leadership kerfuffle, Gove originally backed Boris and there were rumours he would be his chancellor. Then Boris fucked up badly a couple of times. He first managed to publish his vision for exit that included retaining the freedom of movement and had to completely denounce his own article. He then was supposed to meet with Remain MPs and abandoned the meeting 15 minutes before it started. Somewhere along the line he is also rumoured to have refused to promise Gove a job.

Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch said he would quite like to see Gove as the leader, despite Gove having ruled himself out of the running. For his part Gove had remained mostly silent since the referendum.

So last night an email from Gove's wife was leaked warning that Boris would a terrible leader. Gove's wife, by the by, is Sarah Vine who writes for the Daily Mail. The email raised doubts about the support Boris would have and his capability as leader.

Meanwhile polls showed that May was trouncing Johnson among the Conservative membership, while having retained a rather strong position by staying mostly out of the debate. She is viewed as a natural Leaver who stayed loyal to the government by backing Remain, but quietly. She is also viewed as a potentially strong leadership figure, if not the second coming of the Iron Lady herself. She had started her campaign by ripping Boris to shards over his negotiating abilities and the time she overruled him over the use of water cannons in London.

Then today Gove announces only hours before the deadline and Boris ends up pulling out of the race only minutes before it begins. He was quickly backed by a number of senior figures, including Nicky Morgan. According to one leaked text message, Boris's camp think this was a planned coup from Gove's side from the very beginning, so it may be that Gove no longer gets the support of the united Leave campaign.

The stories that should come out of this are going to put most political farces to shame.


EDIT: And it gets better.

I'm told Boris' widely criticised @Telegraph column - was SUB EDITED by Michael Gove who suggested changes - and Boris put them in

JP Morgan's base case for Brexit. Looks like it was leaked by a journalist, so have a mirror in case.

There are still wildcards there, but this seems a plausible path to me. Not a nice one, but plausible.

So did they actually get out of the EU, or did they crawl back apologizing?
I am a bit out of touch with current events.

The referendum was advisory only. The UK voted to leave, but now the government has to work out what to actually do. Currently that is run around on fire.

But... they didn't disagree with anything the EU was doing and what they did want to do the UK could have done anyhow (speaking of the moderates here)

For a lot of people (including some I work with) it was about the principle of the thing. They don't like that the EU can create laws that apply to the UK. Of course, those laws are enacted by Parliament and they can rarely name any that they disagree with or that they can't be convinced are sensible (such as fishery quotas).

There is also a fear that we will be dragged into the ever closer union, despite having negotiated an explicit exemption from that. Others believe that the EU in its current form is beyond reform and unsustainable. There are genuine debates to be had about these questions, but they require nuance and level headed debate, which a referendum doesn't exactly lend itself to.

For most British voters the EU is a black box who they are told have some control over their lives, and which has been used as scapegoat for a few decades now. Boris famously made his name in journalism by reporting outlandish stories about the EU from Brussels. I've seen a story about other journalists deliberately feeding him more and more absurd stories to see how extravagant the lies he would publish could get.

Trying to overturn these decades of misinformation and blame in a six week campaign was impossible, and trying to educate people on real problems within the EU would be counterproductive, because they would first have to understand how it works and why the lies are so badly wrong.


To be fair, the EU is incredibly complex, especially the UK's relationship with it. We are the exception in almost every case, and our weird system of national government makes it even more complicated. You have to have an understanding of how British constitutional law works alongside European law, as well as how the European political system is structured to really see why Brexit was completely futile. But few people are going to go and study what could easily be a multi-part university course just to tick a box at the ballot.

I'd go with this.

Quote from: palsch on June 28, 2016, 10:36:14 am

Yep. Now time to look up the rules that govern how to trigger an actual leadership election in Labour (oddly the confidence vote isn't enough...). Watch for the whips resigning.

Ah, they simply need a challenger with 20% of the PLP backing them. I believe the magic number is still the 35 who backed Corbyn. Whoops, 51 MPs and MEPs. May be difficult with the way the party is fractured.

Late edit: Corbyn would also require 51 to appear on the ballot. Labour List are reporting only 40 MPs voted for him in the confidence vote, with the other 4 reported elsewhere actually abstaining. That would mean he needs at least 11 Labour MEPs (out of 20) or to swing some of those MPs.

It gets worse.

There is conflicting legal advice over whether Corbyn needs the nomination from MPs to be on the ballot. If he is on he will likely win among the general membership (still has the strong backing from Momentum and the unions), and whether or not he is may well be the result of a court case. That could make the fight even more bitter.

The Lib Dems and Greens should be recruiting a lot of new members and possibly an MP or two from this.