This is Jonathan Pie at his very best. The usual use of language warnings apply:
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Thanks, Richard. Absolutely brilliant and has the added advantage of being true.
Superb!
Should be compulsory viewing for every citizen of the UK, and every party apart from the Tories should use it for campaigning today.
Sadly they won’t.
And thus the anti Tory vote will be split and Johnson will be back in No 10 on Friday with a clear majority.
It makes me want to weep.
Good to see you here Ivan
Hope you’re well
Thanks for that. I noted this on the BBC website this morning – which is interesting (MMT related)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50579897
Amazing they only found UK critics to talk to…
What did you expect from the MSM, neoliberal politicians and the economic establishment? Such people will resist any attempts to prove them wrong (at least in public). No amount of theoretical or empirical evidence will suffice. Ego + authority trump reality. FFS – there are still those who believe the earth is flat! That’s ‘ideology’ for you 🙂
Overall, this is not a good article. It doesn’t flow and, while it makes some valid points, it suffers from what I can only call BBC-creep, which affects the clarity of the argument if, in fact, there is one.
If you can’t find an argument there, I worry
And you do realise he is a comedian? All right, a political comedian?
Telegraph, Mail, Times, Express, The Scum – 40 years of grooming the population comes down to this: vote for the mendacious fatberg……….or not.
Reality is always more interesting than fiction & one certainly could not have made this up.
Richard – I’m curious, now that Trump has sabotaged the WTO where does that leave Johnson and the ERG’s much vaunted safety net.
If (god help us) the Tories win the GE and they, as seems likely, fail to agree a deal with the EU what happens then. If the WTO is either non existent or exists in name only. are we thrown into a trade world of dog eat dog where only the strong will prosper.
I am as clueless as you
But let me also be clear – Johnson will give the EU whatever they want to get a deal by 31/12/20 if he gets in – just as he did to get a decal by 31/10/19
All that matters to him is the label on the tin – A DEAL – and not what is in it
As I understand matters, Michel Barnier has dismissed the prospect of a deal by 31st December, 2020. This would take us back to no deal.
I do not subscribe to the proposition that ‘no deal’ is off the table. Furthermore I suspect that the Brexit Party and the ERG, by their actions during the election (hello, is there anyone there?), are still counting on there being no deal at the end of 2020. I thought this was obvious. Perhaps someone could explain to me why, given the assumption of an overall, usable Conservative majority in Parliament after the election (a speculation of course, but one the hard-line Brexiteers are campaigning for and banking on); it is thought Dominic Cummings, the ERG, the core of the new Conservative-Brexit & Unionist Party (and Farage for that matter) would actually hope or expect there will be a deal by December, 2020. It is not their objective.
I should add that I have assumed, after the disaster of Theresa May’s incompetent negotiations and Johnson’s capitulation over Ireland (that he is still trying to dress up as a triumph!), that after spending three years failing to split the 27 apart; even the ERG can see that the EU will not roll over and – somehow ‘at the death’ – simply allow the UK to have their cake and eat it, and wreck the EU in the process. I appreciate that the Conservative Party is obtuse, but I trust not literally imbecilic.
The only way we get a deal is by saying yes to alignment – effectively Brexit In Name Only
I think Johnson will do that
Possibly, “alignment” as a cynical exercise in misleading optics. ‘Alignment’ will begin deteriorating from Day 1. Regulations are more important than tariffs, and alignment will decay and degenerate until it is quite soon unrecognisable, and inoperable across a large area of trade and commerce. It is meaningless unless sustained; and there has been no provision or planning for the required resources, or clear statement of the long-term purpose. It is a fiction.
I think no deal remains the most likely outcome of a Conservative victory – whether it dressed up as a faux “deal”, with nowhere to go.
I rarely watch anything on Youtube but watched this latest Pie on the app on my phone. The video advert which began to play (until I could skip it at the very first instance) was some sort of ‘Get Brexit Done’ nonsense from the Tories.
I understand that people who use social media a lot are being faced endlessly by this sort of thing (well, the Tories have to spend those Rubles on something, don’t they?). I only hope enough people ignore them and aren’t taken in.
To be honest I’m happy that my 1960s grammar school education = girls only – no boys to distract 🙂 was superior to what ever Johnson got. We were not allowed to faff and bluff our way through to get results, we had to put the work in. What our parents were/did appeared not to matter. No sense of entitlement was cultivated. We had no centuries, or even decades, of history ( built in 1957 ) to rest upon. If one wanted to study Latin it was available, most of us didn’t and so learned modern languages with our time, taught by native French and German speakers. All our books and other equipment was supplied.
I guess Jonathan Pie experienced a different time.
He did…
So cathartic!! Thank you.