1/ 🧵 Sunak is likely to leave us with HS2 as a stump linking Birmingham to Acton. The Old Oak Common station will be incapable of handling more than a handful of trains an hour. So this massively costly stump of a railway will be grotesquely underutilised, and many trains from the North will have to be routed down the existing lines, eliminating most of HS2's benefits in terms of speed and capacity. If you are going to build an immensely expensive railway, then one thing you must do is ensure it is used to close to full capacity, and for HS2, that means building the Euston terminus. 2/ HS2 has been poorly conceived from the beginning. As planned, the northern arms of the Y were always going to be underutilised. There's a solution, but that would have required joined-up thinking, which is alien to most British governments. HS2 should be more closely integrated with cross-country rail services, particularly the main route from the SW and South Wales to the North.

1/ Brexit was won through the worst abuses of democracy in modern British history. Here's one of them - Had it been mandatory the referendum would have been annulled because of Vote Leave's electoral law-breaking. But the government then lied that the result was an instruction 2/ By lying that the vote of 37% of the electorate in an advisory referendum was an instruction, the government unleashed a tide of anti-democratic hate against Remainers in the name of the "Will of the People", a tactic Goebbels had used after a Nazi referendum victory.

1/ Please retweet if you want our Freedom of Movement restored.

We were robbed of our right to live, work, study and love in 30 countries by the worst abuses of democracy in modern British history. 2/ Throughout the entire Brexit debate Remain politicians dared not talk about Freedom of Movement, and so left the debate to be framed in terms of immigration hysteria. There was no debate about the loss of our Freedom of Movement. It was an appalling failure of democracy.

1/ Brexit was designed by the economic libertarian right to drive the UK towards ever more libertarian economic, trade and regulatory arrangements to compensate for the loss of EU trade. Any devation from that path will be labelled as sabotaging Brexit.
#RejoinEU 2/ The EU does not allow cherry-picking so any attempt to improve our trade with the EU, particularly in the vital service sector will require rejoining the Single Market. A Labour government wedded to Brexit won't be able to do that.

Rejoiners - if you want Labour to listen to us, then you have to threaten to deny it your votes. That is the only way to ever get a chance of rejoining the EU or Single Market.

The local elections are a good chance to show rejoiners are an electoral force. Vote pro-EU
#RejoinEU The same goes for supporters of PR. Labour will only listen to you if you threaten to deny it your votes. Facts, reasons and Conference votes will have no effect. Only the threat of electoral defeat will force the Labour leadership to support PR.

1/ If you want us to rejoin the EU or Single Market, if you want Freedom of Movement restored, then you should seriously consider voting for pro-EU parties in the local elections. Only when politicians see that Rejoiners are an electoral force will they listen to us.
#RejoinEU 2/ While the Labour leadership knows it can take Rejoiner votes for granted it will ignore us and will continue to pander to the dwindling minority of hard core Leavers. If it fears the loss of Rejoiner votes it will act to keep us on board.

1/ Boris Johnson used Jo Cox's murder and the threat of terrorism to intimidate MPs into supporting Brexit. He wasn't the only leading politician to use the threat of violence to scare MPs into toeing the line.

Why have we been so accepting of Brexit terrorism?
#RejoinEU 2/ The Brexit press and leading Brexit politicians used rhetoric that legitimised, encouraged and incited violence. The use of threats of violence for political goals is legally defined as terrorism.

1/ If a few million Rejoiners made it clear that they won't vote for a pro-Brexit party, Starmer and co wouldn't shrug their shoulders and say "Oh well that's the election lost". They would devise a plan to bring the Rejoiners on board. 2/ Labour could say that if a clear majority of voters show a strong desire to rejoin the Single Market or EU, then as a democratic party Labour would have to listen to those voters, and respect their wishes.

Westerners make a grave mistake in thinking Putin escalates in response to what he sees as Western threats. That is a west-centric delusion. Putin is a Russian imperialist who seeks to increase his own power and enlarge Russia's empire. It is Western imperialist thinking that makes people think of Putin only in terms of how he reacts to the West. He is not some kind of automaton responding to what the West does. He has his own goals and ambitions in regard to which the West is merely an obstacle to be overcome.

1/ The thing about fascists is that at core they feel weak and powerless. That is why they feel threatened by things like face masks. It is why they crave the opportunity to stamp their power all over others, in the deluded hope that it will make them feel strong on the inside. 2/ But power can never appease the fascists' inner feelings of powerlessness. The inner voice continues to mock them with "You are weak and pathetic". And that drives them to ever more rage, ever more desperate abuses of power, ever more frantic attempts to feel strong.

If Remainers want the UK to rejoin the EU or the SM then we have to make it clear that we will never vote for a party that refuses to listen to the pro-EU majority. Labour has to earn our votes, not demand them with menaces about a Tory victory.
#RejoinEU Labour doesn't have to say it would lead the UK back into the EU. That is a straw man argument. It should say that if a clear majority of the British people support rejoining, then, as a democratic party, it would have to listen to that majority and act accordingly.

Brexit is a ‘complete disaster’ and ‘total lies’, says Tory business boss

Private equity veteran Guy Hands says Boris Johnson ‘threw the country and the NHS under the bus’
#RejoinEU
theguardian.com/business/2023/… “The only way that the Brexit put forward by Boris Johnson was going to work was if there was a complete deregulation of the UK and we moved to a sort of Liz Truss utopia of a Singapore state and that was just never going to happen,”

1/ Corruption is inbuilt in a Tory elite which has disconnected itself from ordinary society and has tied itself to its super-rich donors and patrons. Neither the Tory elite nor its benefactors have any vested interest in the democracy and laws which protect ordinary folk. 2/ If we want to curb political corruption and defend democracy then we must do all we can to break the link between politicians and the super-rich. Among other things that means ending big money donations gifts and lucrative second jobs for MPs.

1/ Brexit poll: Two-thirds of Britons now support future referendum on rejoining the EU.

But the next election will be between two Brexit parties. When it comes to Brexit we have no democratic choice, and no democratic accountability. #RejoinEU independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi… 2/ From 2016 the two main parties have used FPTP to deny a voice to what has, since 2017, been the pro-EU majority. Brexit was won by the worst abuses of democracy in modern British history, and it continues to be maintained by the anti-democratic suppression of majority opinion.

1/ Brexit Myth - The 2019 election showed Brexit's popularity.

Reality - In the 2019 election 2nd referendum parties gained a clear majority of the popular vote, despite Corbyn, a poor Labour campaign and a wretchedly bad LibDem campaign. 2/ Brexit Myth - Labour was hammered for opposing Brexit.

Reality - Since the referendum Labour has never opposed Brexit. Its electoral failures since then were not brought about by its opposing Brexit.

1/ A lot of infantile Marxists attacked this thread. It never occurs to their little cultist brains that in the modern epoch democracy has only existed in capitalist societies. Capitalism has been necessary for democracy, but not sufficient.

https://twitter.com/nickreeves9876/status/1482757279002902536?t=R1GoYFUQMfFOwm_hMPDiPA&s=19

2/ By yelling that capitalism is attacking democracy these infantile Marxists are distracting attention from the kleptofascist axis that is working to cripple or destroy democracy, and they are weakening resistance to those forces.

1/ I think we might be forgetting about the hate and lies that won Brexit. This wasn't news reporting or comment. It was pure fascist hate propaganda, which had nothing to do with journalism. It is amazing that faced with such an onslaught Remain got as much as 48%. 2/ Here are some more examples of the fascist hate and lies pumped out by the tax-dodging Brexit billionaire press. This relentless torrent of pro-Brexit propaganda went on for years without the restrictions that limit election campaign expenditure.

1/ Starmer says rejoining the Single Market wouldn't boost economic growth. Starmer is lying. He is colluding in the most destructive right-wing policy in modern British history, a policy that every day inflicts more harm on the British people. 2/ Brexit is not just inflicting economic damage. Brexit has dragged British politics into a cesspit of dishonesty. And Starmer is walllowing in that stinking cesspit which is corrupting our politics and eroding the fabric of democracy.

1/ They say automation destroys jobs. That's false. Automation mostly destroys industrial jobs, just as agricultural technology destroyed agricultural jobs. What's left is an economy increasingly dominated by service sector jobs many of which are currently impossible to automate. 2/ So while automation will make industrial products ever cheaper it won't produce much in the way of economic growth because ever more of the economy will be devoted to service sector activities which can't be automated. Economic growth will therefore continue to slow.

1/ US tech billionaire Peter Thiel is using his money to destroy democracy. He has said that the book which has influenced him most is William Rees-Mogg's "The Sovereign Individual" which forecasts the replacement of democracy by kleptocracy.
theguardian.com/technology/202… 2/ Democracies must act to defend themselves from super-rich individuals like Thiel, Koch, the Murdochs and the Mercers. They are far more dangerous than Putin, because they are working to hollow out democracy from the inside.

1/ People think automation will destroy jobs. It won't. It will destroy some jobs and replace them with others. Manufacturing jobs will continue to decline, and the goods they provide will become cheaper and more plentiful. 2/ Jobs in various transport sectors are likely to decline, especially if self-driving vehicles finally arrive en masse. But jobs that can't be automated such as those in care, health, plumbing, much repair work, will multiply. Social skills will become increasingly important.