The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[chrisp65]

Well, I’m presuming we’re looking for greater profit, rather than better health outcomes.

There can’t be any other reason for letting the US in.

It’s a much more profit oriented model, far more money to be made.

[Xann]

Oxycodone as Soma and $600 EpiPens. 

Just tell the kids they're not allowed any allergies.

[StefanAVFC]

 

[HanoiVillan]

This guy seems to get into the media for the wrong reasons quite a lot for a no-mark backbencher:

 

[ml1dch]

The precis of the Russia Report sent to the press:

For people who don't fancy reading the whole thing. 

[StefanAVFC]

 

[chrisp65]

Tory MP Rob Roberts:

 

Quite the catch, Mr Roberts

 

He’s got form too, others have been moved out of his office when they’ve declined to go out with him.

Not all pricks are tories.

[ml1dch]

Also the brain box behind this subsequently-deleted claim:

 

 

[chrisp65]

With reference to an earlier discussion on Labour needing to form a ‘pact’ of some sort with the SNP, this Roberts guy won his seat by 850 votes.

Labour had been offered an agreement where Plaid and the Libs wouldn’t stand in Delyn, but Labour refused. Plaid and the Liberals got something like 3,500 votes.

 

[HanoiVillan]

As I said before, he seems to be amassing quite a hit rate for a guy who has been in office less than 8 months. He's one of about half a dozen backbenchers I have an eye on as 'potential disaster', and he's comfortably ahead of the field as well.

[HanoiVillan]

'Pweeease!'

[snowychap]

 

[HanoiVillan]

'He puts that [concerns about people with No Recourse To Public Funds] within the context of people that he said are in need of support and funds. And as I've already articulated and echoed to the House [?], if there are particular cases he would like to raise with me, he's very welcome to do so and I will look at them directly'.

Great, seems like a useful system that should scale up nicely. All these families in dire financial straits have to do is contact Stephen Timms so that he can raise their cases one by one with Priti Patel, and she will make a God-like judgment on each. Impossible to design anything better or more humane, surely.

[snowychap]

7 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Great, seems like a useful system that should scale up nicely. All these families in dire financial straits have to do is contact Stephen Timms so that he can raise their cases one by one with Priti Patel, and she will make a God-like judgment on each. Impossible to design anything better or more humane, surely.

Indeed, it's a standard ministerial despatch box cop out but in this instance it's so obviously crackers.

[Xann]

Quote

Russia has mounted a prolonged, sophisticated campaign to undermine Britain’s democracy and corrupt its politics, while successive British governments have looked the other way, according to a long-delayed report released on Tuesday by a British parliamentary committee.

From meddling in elections and spreading disinformation to funneling dirty money and employing members of the House of Lords, the Russians have tried to co-opt politicians and corrode institutions, often with little resistance from law enforcement or intelligence agencies that ignored years of warning signs.

The report, in many ways harder on British officials than the Russians, did not answer the question of whether Russia swayed one of the most consequential votes in modern British history: the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union. But it was unforgiving about who is protecting British democracy.

“No one is,” the report’s authors said.

“The outrage isn’t if there is interference,” said Kevan Jones, a Labour Party member of Parliament who served on the intelligence committee that released the report. “The outrage is no one wanted to know if there was interference.”

New York Times

Quote

 

Russia’s ability to meddle in Britain’s democracy has apparently flourished. There was no bombshell revelation in the report, from Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, showing Russia had an open grip on British democracy. But that’s not how corruption, and democratic disruption, works. It’s more insidious and better disguised. 

Britain is a mid-sized country, but it’s always been an intelligence superpower. The impression left by the report is of a nation very much off its game. This isn’t the traditional tale of spies and honey traps, but a postmodern version in which Putin’s allies can infiltrate and undermine democratic institutions using cyberattacks, social-media trolls and cadres of fabulously well-heeled Russian expatriates with establishment links. It’s through these channels, the Committee says, that Russian interference in British democracy has become “the new normal.”...

... Another cause for concern is the government’s refusal to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Anybody who’s lived through the past four years of Brexit drama will understand the desire to move on. Downing Street said on Tuesday it had “seen no evidence of successful interference in the EU referendum” and therefore wouldn’t look further. But this topic is too troubling to simply ignore, and not even the opposition Labour Party is asking for a rerun of the Brexit vote.

It’s hard to believe that Russia meddled in Scotland’s 2014 independence referendum (something the Committee found credible evidence for) and the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and didn’t try similar with Brexit. The report said Britain’s refusal to investigate was “in stark contrast to the U.S. handling of allegations of Russian interference” in the 2016 vote.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-22/russia-report-shows-the-vulnerability-of-boris-johnson-s-britain

 

[StefanAVFC]

Abysmal. Trumpian.

[HanoiVillan]

IMO that exchange (as outlined there by Dunt, maybe it happened differently in the House) illustrates a problem with Starmer. He repeatedly focuses on process, but process is boring to all but a tiny handful of listeners. Nobody normal knows what the Home Secretary 18 months ago said, or what came out of the Intelligence Committee.

You could make a case for that stuff, but there's a bigger and better case in front of him that would require less focus on process and more on politics. The report did not mention which political parties benefit from Russian funding, yet we know, in a practical sense, that this is mainly (entirely?) the Conservatives. Lubov Chernukhin and other people connected to Russia's elite keep paying vast sums of money to play tennis with Conservative cabinet ministers. Why do they do that, and why was that information excluded from the report? Starmer needs to attack this stuff directly, not focus on the process, which probably reminds Brexit-minded voters of how remainers spent the last few years trying to use process to frustrate Brexit (hence Johnson's responses).

[Davkaus]

Quote

Johnson tries the flip-flop line against Starmer. The leader of the opposition has more flip-flops than Bournemouth beach."

Some textbook projection there. 

[snowychap]

31 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

IMO that exchange (as outlined there by Dunt, maybe it happened differently in the House) illustrates a problem with Starmer. He repeatedly focuses on process, but process is boring to all but a tiny handful of listeners.

Yes, I think you've a point here - not that I like it given that I'm probably a member of that handful.

I mean that I think one of our biggest issues is that we tend to dismiss process (because often it's done badly anyway and bad process/es is/are awful) and anything fighting back against that is good but we must also not forget that there are political points to be made and they don't always have to be made in the kind of tawdry, puerile way that the likes of the Prime Minister makes them.

Edited July 22, 2020 by snowychap

[blandy]

48 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

IMO that exchange (as outlined there by Dunt, maybe it happened differently in the House) illustrates a problem with Starmer. He repeatedly focuses on process, but process is boring to all but a tiny handful of listeners. Nobody normal knows what the Home Secretary 18 months ago said, or what came out of the Intelligence Committee.

You could make a case for that stuff, but there's a bigger and better case in front of him that would require less focus on process and more on politics. The report did not mention which political parties benefit from Russian funding, yet we know, in a practical sense, that this is mainly (entirely?) the Conservatives. Lubov Chernukhin and other people connected to Russia's elite keep paying vast sums of money to play tennis with Conservative cabinet ministers. Why do they do that, and why was that information excluded from the report? Starmer needs to attack this stuff directly, not focus on the process, which probably reminds Brexit-minded voters of how remainers spent the last few years trying to use process to frustrate Brexit (hence Johnson's responses).

You might be right, I was working and missed it. I remember the line, though, about wrestling with a pig.

In essence it seems to me there are 2 issues. 1. The Russians interfere in our politics (and the tories benefit from it). 2. Brexit - they didn't look into Russian involvement in that because they knew what they'd find. Starmer's clearly decided not to re visit Brexit. It's done, it's happened.

As for "Why do they do that, and why was that information excluded from the report?" - it was likely in the classified annex.