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Paul Mason

8 Apr, 9 tweets, 4 min read

Alba, NIP, WEP... the rise of the popup party is about more than just networks lowering the barrier to entry... it's what happens when people contemplate the permanent rule of English Tory xenophobes... 1/ newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

2/ British politics looks less like the A-Level Politics syllabus than at any time since the 1930s... "liberalism, conservatism and socialism" have all fragmented culturally... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

3/ FPTP is holding fragmentation at bay, but if you look at Spain, Ireland, Germany or Italy - the same centrifugal forces in politics are there.... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

4/ Labour itself has become two parties... with a definable left that wants something (socialism, zero carbon, democracy) and a right nostalgic for Blairism... in PR system it would make sense for them to be separate... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

5/ ... and because people now see the possibility of a Progressive Alliance, a left-led coalition government and then PR, politicians are rightly starting to define themselves on principles/obsessions... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

6/ Who would fancy being a left candidate on a list system controlled by Labour HQ? Not me! So instead of who you know, it is logical for politicians to start concentrating on "what you stand for" ... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

7/ Labour - not just the leadership but what's left of its intelligentsia - always running to catch up with reality... if you can start a party from scratch, and existing parties are so obnoxious internally, why would the new generation engage? newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

8/ Political tribes will come together around one big objective. In Scotland it's independence; in England/Wales I suspect it will only be a radical economic, political and social offer from Labour... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

@NewStatesman

9/ But the fact is always lost on technocrats (both SNP and Labour): just because you created a problem, doesn't mean you have the automatic capacity to solve it. The law of simplicity to complexity is strong in politics... my @NewStatesman piece today newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

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More from @paulmasonnews

Paul Mason

@paulmasonnews

9 Apr

@mhmck

No defence experts I talk to claim to be certain what Putin plans in Ukraine. What we know is: 1/ Russia launched a big military buildup, giving itself the ability a) break out of Crimea to the north and b) stage a landing on the Azov coast (map not mine h/t @mhmck)...

2/ Ukraine’s president Zelensky looks out of his depth. He has called for UKR to be allowed to join NATO, which is a non-starter. I say this as someone highly critical of Russia’s geopolitics and internal repression....

3/ I am told the Ukrainian military preparations look currently shambolic, as they believe the USA will ride diplomatically to their rescue and, in any case, are numerically and technologically outclassed...

Read 12 tweets

Paul Mason

@paulmasonnews

3 Apr

@DominicRaab

FCDO's @DominicRaab says he's "gravely concerned" by the Russian buildup on Ukraine's borders. Me too, and we should be doing everything we can to calm things down. So what's going on? 1/ Here's the Russian deployment video traced on a map citeam.org/ru-forces-near…

@ICDS_Tallinn

2/ What is Putin trying to achieve? No Western government seems to possess a clear answer. This @ICDS_Tallinn analysis says: flareup, insertion of Russian peacekeepers followed by annexation icds.ee/en/rumours-of-…

3/ Meanwhile in Belarus, the slow but steady takeover of the private sector by Russian interests, and redirection of export traffic from the EU to the Russia atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainea…

Read 9 tweets

Paul Mason

@paulmasonnews

28 Mar

I could see today's anti-left briefings coming from within the PLP a mile off - here's what's driving it 1/ The social-democratic centre left is a theoretical deadzone ... it has no explanations for its own failure... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

@meadwaj

2/ ...So it's always a "failure to communicate" rather than the strategy itself.... The real problem - as I, @meadwaj and others point out - is that the Tory project has morphed radically... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

3/ The Tories are now a machine for staying in power by throwing money at individual communities, demographics and problems... the central bank will subsidise that until the UK becomes a one-party state... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…

Read 10 tweets

Paul Mason

@paulmasonnews

13 Mar

Contents of the Integrated Review are being drip-fed to the Times this weekend. Get ready for 2 weeks of hubris and bullshit about Britain as a "global power" operating in the Pacific and space, while the army is cut by 10,000. Thread 1/ ... thetimes.co.uk/article/defenc…

2/ The IR is both a review of foreign policy and defence: on the foreign policy, it's set to open up the first truly partisan situation in UK politics in a lifetime. Why? Labour will oppose the "tilt to the Indo-Pacific" - and so does Joe Biden... see below...

3/ The army is getting cut because its chiefs refused to play the game of the IR, which is talk about AI, space, cyber and then build hi-tech platforms with no resilient industry behind them in times of crisis...

Read 11 tweets

Paul Mason

@paulmasonnews

9 Mar

@RachelReevesMP

Labour's @RachelReevesMP has written an important strategic article in the @NewStatesman which I assume reflects frontbench thinking ... it has implications for the left that need to be decoded... newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20… 1/ Here goes... (thread)....

2/ The Tories haven't just borrowed some Corbynist policies, they too have moved back from the individual to "community" as the basis for politics - so this is Base One of Labour's strategy: begs the question of how communities are defined and imagined...

3/ Very important attempt to differentiate from the Tories, English (and Scottish) nationalism, and ethnonationalist politics. But Labour needs to be a lot harder attacking the rising xenophobia that makes this argument necessary...

Read 16 tweets

Paul Mason

@paulmasonnews

8 Mar

I'm a republican - but I can see a much more limited constitutional monarchy coming out of the Meghan/racism scandal. The Windsors/post-war Establishment chose this model; it's destroyed two talented, independent women who didn't fit; it needs to change 1/...

2/ For all the media intrusion, the British press never actually holds the Royal institution to account: sycophancy plus intrusion pass for accountability. That has to end. Parliament now has to redesign the monarchy...

3/ The tragedy is that only Harry and Meghan looked remotely close to the modern world. Now they're shut out, the institution - like the officers' messes, the Pall Mall clubs, the hedge funds and landed estates it's part of - reeks of prejudice and elitism...

Read 8 tweets

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