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Nick Reeves #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
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23 Mar, 4 tweets, 2 min read
When a few months ago, I criticised @Keir_Starmer for his Brexit stance, I was met by many polite replies suggesting that he was employing clever tactics and that we should give him time. The responses are very different now. Remainers are dumping Starmer.
Not only are Remainers reacting angrily to Starmer's Brexit stance, but unlike with Corbyn, when he came under Remainer attack, very few people are leaping to his defence. A few months ago people were enthusiastic about Starmer. Now that seems to have largely fizzled out.
Starmer appears to be taking his advice from Claire Ainsley who is “pretty clear-eyed about the political shift away from economic and social liberalism, and the new centrality of social, culture and identity issues in British politics.”
thelondoneconomic.com/politics/what-…
If on Ainsley's advice, Starmer is pursuing a socially conservative, slavishly pro-Brexit path, then Labour will lose the support of many social liberals and Remainers while squandering its energy in a futile attempt to out-Tory the Tories on jingoism and social conservatism.

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More from @nickreeves9876

Nick Reeves #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
23 Mar
1/ People claim that being critical of Brexit is politically suicidal. There is no evidence for that. From 2017 onwards there was a majority for Remain in spite of both main parties and most of the press backing Brexit, and the BBC deliberately silencing Remain voices.
2/ In the 2019 election 2nd referendum parties gained a clear majority of the vote in spite of Corbyn's unpopularity and wretchedly bad Labour and LibDem campaigns. With better leaders, campaigns and electoral cooperation the opposition would have won.
3/ People point to the bad showing of the LibDems in the 2019 election, even though their vote share rose sharply compared to 2017. Their vote share was hit badly by tactical voting with people frantically switching to Labour in a vain effort to beat the Tories.
Read 4 tweets
Nick Reeves #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
22 Mar
Brexit: Starmer says Labour will not fight ‘yesterday’s wars’ and doesn’t ‘want to rejoin’

Starmer is deluded, the Brexit deal and the Protocol are so divisive, destructive and unstable that Brexit politics is here to stay. Brexit is absolutely not done. thelondoneconomic.com/politics/brexi…
Brexit is a horrible mess which the Tories and their press allies will use to stir up nationalist hysteria. It is not going away. And so long as Labour tries to appeal to Brexiters it will increasingly alienate and anger the majority of its voters and members.
And Labour won't succeed with the Brexiters, because it won't be able or want to match the Tories for loudmouthed jingoism and xenophobia. So by trying to appease the Brexiters it will lose on all counts.
Read 4 tweets
Nick Reeves #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
22 Mar
The #PoliceBill is not directed against violent protests. It has no impact on them. It aims to suppress peaceful protest. It is an attack on our rights and liberty. It is not the act of a democratic government. It is the act of a Putinist regime.
The #PoliceBill is not the act of any legitimate democratic government. It drives a bulldozer through the right to protest which is a constitutional cornerstone of any democracy. And the UK is only a democracy by dint of unwritten constitutional conventions and norms.
With a compliant Commons majority the PM has the power of an absolute monarch. In the UK the power of the monarch was not curbed by a constitution, instead it was transfered to the monarch's proxy - the PM.
Read 8 tweets
Nick Reeves #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
21 Mar
1/ People think that Leavers and many Tory voters will be shocked and angry when they realise they've been lied to. That's naive, the Tory supporters know their leaders are lying, and they like and are grateful for the lies, which express their views and harm their enemies.
2/ Democracy relies on people feeling they and their political opponents form a single democratic community, with a common code of conduct. But the UK is not a democratic society. The nationalist right now act as a tribe that is free to cheat and lie against its enemies.
3/ The propaganda of the Brexit right is cynically devised to inflame tribal sentiments. We are threatened by an influx of migrants, we are controlled by or attacked by the EU, and the liberal metropolitan enemies within are undermining the moral & cultural fabric of the nation.
Read 6 tweets
Nick Reeves #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
19 Mar
On the authoritarian right politics is largely built around tribal power, leadership, and war against the other. On the left it's about principles, but on the authoritarian left the principles are treated as sacred and deviation becomes heresy - hence hard leftist intolerance.
When Theresa May mocked 'citizens of nowhere' her purpose wasn't to state an idiotically obvious truth, but to deny the idea of a common humanity, to whom universal principles could apply. She was asserting the tribal view that each tribe has its principles and rights.
In a tribal mentality, which denies universal rights, it's not incoherent to deny Scotland rights which you demand for the UK (Greater England). Scotland is simply viewed as an inferior tribal entity which has fewer rights than England.
Read 4 tweets
Nick Reeves #FBPE #FBPA #ProgressiveAlliance Profile picture
19 Mar
A reminder of the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 when over 100,000 people stood up against Union Jack waving fascists posing as patriots.
A photo of the rally of 30,000 fascists in Earl's Court in July 1939 side by side with a photo of one of Farage's rallies. Farage will have been well aware of, and I'm sure very pleased by the similarity. Again more Union Jack waving fascism.
Fascist leader Oswald Mosley said "True democracy only begins when the Will of the People is carried out". Now where have we heard that recently? Brexit has injected a huge chunk of fascist ideology into our politics.
Read 4 tweets

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