One problem with May is that she’s weak on security (she’d been home secretary before becoming PM) and so the recentattacks could work against her.
But Corbyn is infinitely worse, he thinks there should be freedom of movement between the UK and the Islamic State and doesn’t think police should be able to kill terrorists while they are in the midst of committing terror.
AFAICT he’s firmly convinced that the educational, social and crime problems of the muslim community in Britain are entirely the fault of indigenous racism and that terrorism will just go away if enough tolerance is applied.
Also, IINM, he’s called for ideological purges (within the party to begin with, later…. who knows?).
I’m not enamored of May, to put it very mildly. She’s UK’s Clinton, very neoliberal, very status quo. But both Clinton and May are real politicians of the nation-state era. They earnestly want to try. While Trump / Corbyn are postnational politicians. It’s the politics of hashtags, ridiculously inflated promises nobody intends to keep, flashy rhetoric. It’s no surprise Putin is equally happy about Trump and Corbyn. The vector of their rhetoric is different but that doesn’t matter. They don’t do politics, they perform politics.
Well, the polls are now open in the UK. We’ll soon see if voters who are scared by the recent terror events are delusional enough to vote for a man who will open the flood gates to vastly more Islamic slaughter.
The Nation Magazine is all hot for his election, of course — after all, Corbyn had a Bernie-Sanders-approved “anti-austerity plan” for the nation.
It would seem that Mr.Corbyn’s real crime is calling a spade a spade, and we can’t let that happen, can we?
Pointing the finger again at Ms May’s record, Mr Corbyn said the “difficult conversations” suggested by the Prime Minister in her Downing Street speech on Sunday morning should start “with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that have funded and fuelled extremist ideology”.
“Our priority must be public safety and I will take whatever action is necessary and effective to protect the security of our people and our country,” Mr Corbyn told his audience.
“That includes full authority for the police to use whatever force is necessary to protect and save life as they did last night, as they did in Westminster in March.
“You cannot protect the public on the cheap. The police and security services must get the resources they need, not 20,000 police cuts.
“Theresa May was warned by the Police Federation but she accused them of ‘crying wolf’.
May’s response to terrorism is to clamp down on the Internet, and that always works:
Even if the U.K. government got the expansive new powers it seems to want, there’s no reason to think it would stop terrorism in its tracks. Researchers have found that suicide attacks are a social phenomenon involving support networks that radicalize the perpetrators. Most people in these networks aren’t themselves terrorists. Allowing them to operate openly makes it easier both for moderating voices to intervene and for intelligence agencies to track. If the communities are forced underground and offline, they’ll be harder to infiltrate and monitor.
Moreover, there’s no way to create communications backdoors that only apply to bad guys. While committed terrorists could easily adapt to open source or analog means of communication in response to a government-mandated backdoor, law-abiding civilians would be exposed to new cybersecurity risks and have their economic and civil liberties compromised. Experience has shown that backdoors inevitably will be hacked, making everyone less safe. As the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee noted in its report on the topic, all of the proposed solutions to access encrypted information “come with significant trade-offs, and provide little guarantee of successfully addressing the issue.”
The policy also would have serious consequences for the United Kingdom’s global competitiveness. As the MIT report “Keys Under Doormats” notes, mandating architectures that allow access to encrypted communications “risks the real economic, geopolitical, and strategic benefits of an open and secure internet for law enforcement gains that are at best minor and tactical.” One of the factors behind the West’s dominance in technology and innovation is that its apps are not government-sanctioned, as they are in China or Russia. After all, what consumer would want to buy an app or device that had a built-in backdoor?
The point is not that May is fantastic. She’s not, she’s deeply flawed. But she isn’t going to dismantle national politics and turn it into a spectacle like Trump is doing.
Trump is so horrible not because he’s a Republican, although that’s bad enough. He’s horrible he’s compromising the very idea of national politics. He’d be just as bad if he spouted left wing slogans.
We need to stop thinking in old, worn out categories. They belong to a world that has expired.
What are the new categories of politicians now? What would a positive post-nation-state politics even look like? I still truly struggle to understand the dynamics of the state-form transition
Everybody struggles because it’s still in the future. I’d settle for somebody who’s not a clown and at least tries to do something but pose and seek photo ops.
She went into this election with a 20-point lead,” reports the NY Times. But “rather than ‘strong and stable,’ as her mantra went, Mrs. May could seem brittle and querulous, repeating slogans rather than dipping into substance.”
Why slogans over substance? Because British conservatives have adopted American conservatism, which is defined by total, blathering incompetence.
That fact is well known. What you brought up, though, is an analogy between May and Trump based in this fact. And that’s not very smart because he won.
I don’t like false analogies, sorry. Within this logic one can say that you are just like Trump because you showed up for work 5 minutes late and he won an election. Because that’s exactly the same thing.
Okay, when you resort to a non-sequitur I should point out that they both lost the popular vote in their respective contrived, a fact you seem unwilling to acknowledge.
In attempting to take a seasoned Labour politician and turn him into the equivalent of Trump, who never held an elected office until now, you have finally entered into Cloud-cuckoo-land.
So far it looks like May’s won, but not by enough to govern alone.
Interestingly, it seems UKIP voters did not swing to the Conservatives as predicted but either stayed home or voted Labour (perhaps as a general ‘fuck you’ to ‘the system’).
On the other hand the Scottish national party did badly so the chances of a second independence referendum have greatly been reduced. Independence within the EU probably seemed like a better bet than independence outside of it. That is probably a factor in the Catalonian equation as well.
Clarissa's Blog 
I think it will re-elect her — unless the Brits have totally lost their minds.
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God, I hope so.
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No, clearly.
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One problem with May is that she’s weak on security (she’d been home secretary before becoming PM) and so the recentattacks could work against her.
But Corbyn is infinitely worse, he thinks there should be freedom of movement between the UK and the Islamic State and doesn’t think police should be able to kill terrorists while they are in the midst of committing terror.
AFAICT he’s firmly convinced that the educational, social and crime problems of the muslim community in Britain are entirely the fault of indigenous racism and that terrorism will just go away if enough tolerance is applied.
Also, IINM, he’s called for ideological purges (within the party to begin with, later…. who knows?).
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I’m not enamored of May, to put it very mildly. She’s UK’s Clinton, very neoliberal, very status quo. But both Clinton and May are real politicians of the nation-state era. They earnestly want to try. While Trump / Corbyn are postnational politicians. It’s the politics of hashtags, ridiculously inflated promises nobody intends to keep, flashy rhetoric. It’s no surprise Putin is equally happy about Trump and Corbyn. The vector of their rhetoric is different but that doesn’t matter. They don’t do politics, they perform politics.
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Well, the polls are now open in the UK. We’ll soon see if voters who are scared by the recent terror events are delusional enough to vote for a man who will open the flood gates to vastly more Islamic slaughter.
The Nation Magazine is all hot for his election, of course — after all, Corbyn had a Bernie-Sanders-approved “anti-austerity plan” for the nation.
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It would seem that Mr.Corbyn’s real crime is calling a spade a spade, and we can’t let that happen, can we?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/london-bridge-terror-attack-jeremy-corbyn-theresa-may-police-cuts-protect-public-cheap-general-a7772621.html
Cliff, who are we to believe, you or the lying Independent?
Ms. May is a complete and utter fraud, btw.
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.js
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That’s exactly the same as what people were saying about Trump, isn’t it? He Tells it as it is, he’s not afraid of speaking the truth, he’s anti-PC.
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Corybyn has actually been a politician for awhile, unlike Trump, and the truth about KSA and the other Gulf states is the truth, is it not?
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It’s also true that the US manufacturing is dead, just like Trump said. So what?
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May’s response to terrorism is to clamp down on the Internet, and that always works:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170607/21184237543/theresa-mays-plan-to-regulate-internet-wont-stop-terrorism-it-might-make-things-worse.shtml
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The point is not that May is fantastic. She’s not, she’s deeply flawed. But she isn’t going to dismantle national politics and turn it into a spectacle like Trump is doing.
Trump is so horrible not because he’s a Republican, although that’s bad enough. He’s horrible he’s compromising the very idea of national politics. He’d be just as bad if he spouted left wing slogans.
We need to stop thinking in old, worn out categories. They belong to a world that has expired.
LikeLike
What are the new categories of politicians now? What would a positive post-nation-state politics even look like? I still truly struggle to understand the dynamics of the state-form transition
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Everybody struggles because it’s still in the future. I’d settle for somebody who’s not a clown and at least tries to do something but pose and seek photo ops.
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Isn’t she?
http://www.pmcarpenter.com/2017/06/mrs-may-in-june.html
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Oh, come on. This is simply childish.
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She had a twenty-point lead that she, not Corbyn, not Cameron, nor anyone in the other parties, lost.
But according to you, bringing up that fact is childish.
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That fact is well known. What you brought up, though, is an analogy between May and Trump based in this fact. And that’s not very smart because he won.
I don’t like false analogies, sorry. Within this logic one can say that you are just like Trump because you showed up for work 5 minutes late and he won an election. Because that’s exactly the same thing.
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Like Trump, she lost the popular vote, but the EC is why Trump won in the end.
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Yes, that British electoral college is the bitch.
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Okay, when you resort to a non-sequitur I should point out that they both lost the popular vote in their respective contrived, a fact you seem unwilling to acknowledge.
In attempting to take a seasoned Labour politician and turn him into the equivalent of Trump, who never held an elected office until now, you have finally entered into Cloud-cuckoo-land.
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May lost his majority, her government is minoritary.
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Her government no longer has a majority of seats in parliament. Right now, Trump’s job is a lot more secure than May’s.
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So far it looks like May’s won, but not by enough to govern alone.
Interestingly, it seems UKIP voters did not swing to the Conservatives as predicted but either stayed home or voted Labour (perhaps as a general ‘fuck you’ to ‘the system’).
On the other hand the Scottish national party did badly so the chances of a second independence referendum have greatly been reduced. Independence within the EU probably seemed like a better bet than independence outside of it. That is probably a factor in the Catalonian equation as well.
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