Morning Ed: Britain {2016.07.18.M}
Everything is going swimmingly with the Brexit. Swimmingly!
Also going swimmingly, everything in the Labour Party. All just grand.
Lawrence Serewicz writes of Brexit and the end of British liberal democracy.
Ronan Burtenshaw looks at the British press’s relentless treatment of Jeremy Corbyn.
Bruce Anderson develops a game plan for Theresa May.
Meanwhile, Iain Martin reveals where David Cameron goes from here.
Winston Churchill was very suspicious of the Mormons.
Yeah Labour is in utter disarray. It’s interestingly kind of a mirror image of politics in the US where the center left has split and turned on itself (ceding control to a more extreme left wing politician within the party) to the considerable benefit of their traditional center right opposition which has now been given room to edge further to the right.Report
Labour seems to be a state of disarray since 1979.Report
Blair kind of pulled a Clinton for them in the late 90’s aughts but then foreign policy devastated his faction in the party (probably justifiably).Report
Blair was still seen as betraying the party base long before Iraq II by retreating from Clause Four. Labour’s problems really seem deep rooted and go back decades.Report
This is kind of my line of thinking. Basically, that the GOP and Labour are having this particular problem at this particular time seems non-coincidental.Report
I’m not sure how much you can blame the GOP’s troubles on foreign policy. It’s domestic policy, social issues broadly, where the Republican base is pushing towards the fringes. I’m not sure exactly how much daylight there is between the Rs and the Ds foreign policy right now.
Likewise, I can’t imagine that the Tories would have done much different than Blair.
I guess you can say that these just happened to be the folks who had possession when “mistakes were made.”Report
I speak mostly of internal party politics and the establishments losing control. In both cases, it undermined the establishment by diminishing the most recent office-holders and those around them, strengthening the hands of internal opposition among the rank and file and party divide.Report
jr,
I have no clue, absolutely none, about either party’s position on foreign policy.
Neither is willing to talk about it. Not for real, not with the pieces currently on the table.
The petro-countries are breaking down, so too is China. We stand at high risk of a “Wag the Dog” distraction that involves the United States, potentially military in nature, perhaps even nuclear.
I can give you a decent answer of what Hillary Clinton will do (I know someone who works for her). And, in the end, that’s all that matters.Report
GOP troubles are in foreign policy in that Iraq II gave a full two term president no viable political legacy. A president that was considered, at nomination and re election, a champion of their faction by all the Republican Party factionsReport
I wonder what would have happened to Labour if Blair had a backbone and went against Iraq II.Report
Blair’s decision to go all in on Iraq II wasn’t lack of backbone – he had to navigate through a lot of flak in his own party to get it done – it was just the wrong decision.Report
But for 9/11, GWB would have been the Republican’s Tony Blair. Make of that what you will.Report
Ahem. From the piece on Theresa May:
I’m guessing the author doesn’t include Boris Johnson appointment as Foreign Secretary as an appointment based on “ability”.Report
You know who didn’t hate the Mormons?
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton!
(Burton is one of my historical hero’s.)Report
I presume you’ve read To your Scattered Bodies Go?Report
Heh. Yes, in high school, and that lead to reading an excellent biography of him. And the Kama Sutra! (He is the original English translator)Report
I am sure you read the Karma Sutra for strictly academic purposes…..Report
Re the first piece (pound volatility)… The volatility will continue until the government makes one of two decisions. They either (a) wave the whole Brexit vote off and announce that they’ll be staying in the EU or (b) roll up their sleeves and start on the hard work. At least to me, (b) implies giving Article 50 notice and the international things that go with it, as well as putting a competent team to work going through all of the EU regulations and making all the decisions needed to get the UK regulatory structure in order (eg, will the UK continue the EU requirement that mobile devices include a micro USB charging port?).Report
Baltimore cop not guilty.
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2016/07/18/baltimore-officer-learns-fate-in-gray-case/Report
beyond a reasonable doubt.Report
Arthur Conan Doyle was pretty suspicious of the Mormons too.Report
Also, pretty much everyone else who wasn’t a Mormon. When in my 19th century baseball research I stumble across a headline with the word “Mormon” in it, nine times out of ten the article is over the top lurid sensationalism. I have learned to avoid reading this stuff, because it is too much fun and therefore a great time sink.Report
Baton Rouge cops were ambushed.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/19/us/baton-rouge-shooting.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0&referer=http://www.nytimes.com/?WT.z_jog=1&hF=t&vS=undefinedReport
Ballwin, Missouri, police officer, paralyzed from the neck down following ambush.
http://fox2now.com/2016/07/18/ballwin-officer-shot-in-ambush-paralyzed-from-the-neck-down/Report
I keep seeing the word ambush being used. But I haven’t seen any information provided that details what went down. The most I’ve seen said there was a report of a suspicious person with a gun walking on a highway, cops were called to the scene, shots were fired, the cops were ambushed, the shooter is dead, three cops are dead and three more are wounded, and others are held in custody.
Who fired first? Was the shooter walking down the highway or hidden? Were there other shooters?
Maybe there is reason to be tightlipped about such details. But at the same time, using a term like “ambushed” implies a very specific series of actions taking place and I’m just not seeing it.
I’m not trying to besmirch the police or disrespect those killed. I’m just trying to make heads or tails of a dire situation that seems seriously light on facts.Report
In Missouri, law enforcement in their initial press said it was clearly an ambush. After giving a ticket for a traffic violation, the officer was returning to his car and the suspect got out of the car, ran up behind and shot him three times in the back, all count on the cop car’s camera.
I don’t know if by “ambush,” they meant an unexpected attack, or they are saying the suspect created the situation.Report
Then it’s not “clearly an ambush” at all.Report
@pd-shaw
I didn’t realize we were talking about two different situations. I was referring to the Baton Rouge one. I think I got confused by your link because it referenced Missouri, which is where the Baton Rouge shooter hailed from (I believe).
I am also now seeing the Dallas situation referred to as an ambush. That words seems to fast becoming part of the vernacular to describe these shootings of officers, with varying degrees of accuracy as to its usage.
The Dallas situation would likely qualify. Baton Rouge… well, as I said, we simply don’t know. The situation described here does not seem to. An ambush involves someone attacking from a concealed position.
Now, that doesn’t change the tragedy that seems to have happened in Missouri. But, at the same time, we know how important “framing” is when it comes to these situations and using inaccurate language is wrong.
And, again, it still seems we have very little information about the Baton Rouge shooting. Who shot first? How did the cops approach the shooter? Why are the cops calling it an ambush?Report
I understand. It’s so common these days it’s hard to keep all the shootings of police straight.Report
God forbid the people we are constantly being told to thank for putting their lives on the line actually, ya know, put their lives on the line…Report
The problem for Labour is that the ‘base’ has no trust in the party leaders anymore. Partly because the base has gotten nothing from the party leaders in years, because Labour has been chasing the middle for so long they forgot you have to appease the base sometimes.
Take for example, the welfare vote a few months back. Yes, it was politically popular, but sometimes you have to do the popular thing with your base that the average voter will forget about in six months – that’s what smart Republican’s (and Democrat’s) do.
Hell, even Clinton did this – he vetoed welfare reform two or three times, he shut down the budget to stop cuts in Medicare, and so on, but also made deals with the GOP that the vast majority of the party could understand and in some cases, even backed.
Even when the DNC was getting rolled by the Republican’s during the middle of the Bush Years, they still knew where to stand up to the GOP – after all, Pelosi and friends stopped the Bush SS Privatization despite being in the minority because Bush knew he needed some bipartisan cover on it and that gave the DNC the cover to do things like vote for Defense budgets w/ Iraq War funding in them because the DNC could say “we stopped Dubya from selling off Social Security to Wall Street, but we need to pass this to get other things done.”
It’s the same thing Obama has done, but for some reason, those in power in Labour have no idea what the base really cares about, so they’re stuck standing for things both unpopular with the base and unpopular with the wider electorate and being outmanuevered by a leader doing his social media out of a Marxist bookshop.Report