The Dictatorship of the Etonariat

[jayne lee wilson]

UTTERLY SHOCKED.....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

Though perhaps not entirely surprised.....It is Civil War without the guns and gunpowder, isn't it?

Oh tempora, oh mores!

[Stanfordian]

UTTERLY SHOCKED.....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

Though perhaps not entirely surprised.....It is Civil War without the guns and gunpowder, isn't it?

Oh tempora, oh mores!

Anti-Brexiteers have forced him into a corner by doing everything possible to prevent Britain leaving. I fear more from the fallout of not upholding the Brexit vote.

[muzzer]

We’ve become divided as a nation in a way beyond most people’s comprehension and it’s not going to get any easier. Utterly dispiriting.

[johnb]

Anti-Brexiteers have forced him into a corner by doing everything possible to prevent Britain leaving. I fear more from the fallout of not upholding the Brexit vote.

Alternatively one could say that the fundamentalist Brexiteers have driven May and now Johnson into pursuing an extreme Brexit policy that will be harmful to our country.

[Bryn]

Anti-Brexiteers have forced him into a corner by doing everything possible to prevent Britain leaving. I fear more from the fallout of not upholding the Brexit vote.

Bear in mind that approximately 63% of the electorate did not vote to leave the European Union. 37% of the electorate (less than 27% of the population) voting to leave does not constitute 'the will of the people'.

[Serial_Apologist]

The Dictatorship of the Etonariat

So, B*ris J*hnson has "elected" to prorogue Parliament so that he can get his No Deal through without awkward things such as debates having to get in the way of what is probably the most important constitutional event to unfold in my lifetime.

It's funny reminiscing over the times when those of us of certain left persuasions argued that parliaments such as ours were neither sufficiently responsive nor democratic to conveyance the kinds of political change we had in mind. Eventualities such as the army taking over were part of the calculations envisaged in building up an extra-parliamentary mass movement of sufficient proportions to subvent their likelihood of success, based in communities and workplaces, and, in following Lenin's dictum, parliament would be used merely as a mouthpiece for expounding propaganda and agitation to that end.

The tabloids made a right meal of us, showing what happened in what became the Soviet Union as a consequence of our misguided and dangerous thinking - which from our pov was only intended to extend democracy to areas of life other than the specific one cobbled together under its institutional title every four or five years by placing crosses on ballot papers. A few of us subsequently came around to viewing such "bourgeois democratic" institutions as more positively ingrained in the minds of the populace than could possibly have been the case in pre-1917 Russia, our putative model for transition: how could one go on advocating the "smashing of the state" when that same state had undergone reforms once thought impossible or at best provisional - for how could one reform capitalism, given that its continued drive for competition-based efficiency hinged on permanent class conflict? - ignoring the generations of struggle and sacrifice by "ordinary people" that had secured such reforms in areas of representation, working conditions and rights? In the changed thinking, parliament was as much a part of a part-transformed state, albeit still a capitalist state, as the NHS, and the organisational structures of the nationalised sector, for all its top-downness, and for all the wealth-favouring bias still entrenched in constitutional law and education.

If (like me) you took on board a notion of the occupiability of key parts of the state apparatus to further change as defensible in the popular sphere, rather than the recklesssness of smashing the entire edifice - albeit from Trotsky's position that an offensive comes across as legitimate as long as pursued on the defensive, i.e. in defense of what has been gained - you prepared for the brickbats of accusation that we pretenders were inexperienced and therefore hopeless at running capitalism compared with business people raised and inured in its ethos of every man and woman for themselves - people rare enough in general society to deserve to be paid exorbitantly for the responsibility they were prepared to take on. Because if we ran things transparently, based on positive precedence, and without seeking personal gain, society's expertise would come to our aid.

So, now we find ourselves in the ironic situation of a capitalist system that has become discredited in the eyes of huge numbers of "ordinary people", post the 2008 banking crisis and in the light of its degradation of the natural environment, but with its main beneficiaries, those at the top of politics, business and the mass media, still, like the captain of the Titanic, in charge and hell bent on inflicting division, chaos and mass impoverishment in order to save their own power and lifestyles. The Prime Minister's move, today, to suspend Parliament, is just one more step along the way to disaster.

Brexit was originally touted as the means to restore "our" democracy, following decades of "foreign rule" courtesy the EC/EU: a democracy centred on the much-vaunted institution claimed to epitomise all that is wonderful in our freedom-loving nation, Parliament. What are we now to do? Occupy the place?

[MrGongGong]

Bear in mind that approximately 63% of the electorate did not vote to leave the European Union. 37% of the electorate (less than 27% of the population) voting to leave does not constitute 'the will of the people'.

[Serial_Apologist]

Can this thread be merged with mine? I would be most grateful.

[Pulcinella]

You could sign the petition against proroguing:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/269157

[johnb]

I don't think any of this is real.

It must be strange dystopian riff on The Truman Show intended to entertain the masses.

Anything else is incomprehensible.

[Dave2002]

You could sign the petition against proroguing:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/269157

When did that one start? Now up to over 300000 signatures and counting.

[Bryn]

The evil deed is done. It has received Royal Assent.

[Dave2002]

The evil deed is done. It has received Royal Assent.

Evil indeed. This is not the way to run a country.

[DracoM]

Marks the sunset of the Union we thought we had a place in. And I do NOT mean the EU, but UK.

[oddoneout]

'I live somewhere that used to be the UK' would more accurately sum up my view.