Diamond Dog wrote:Up to 80 Tories to vote against the Chequers deal....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45468544
Ex Brexit Minister Steve Baker :
"We are reaching the point now where it is extremely difficult to see how we can rescue the Conservative Party from a catastrophic split if the Chequers proposals are carried forward.
It is absolutely no pleasure whatsoever to me to acknowledge that, but I look at the mood of colleagues and the mood of the Conservative Party in the country and I am gravely concerned for the future of our party."
Dead in the water, isn't it?
It has been there before and recovered, but previously there seemed to be more talent and a wider band of political thought in the party which now seems to be given over to far right grotesques.
People bore on about Corbyn being far Left but really he is just returning to the old Labour centre ground whereas the right of the Conservative party is now heading off into real political extremities that you only usually see in European fascist and populist parties usually run by men who like dressing up in uniforms with lots of gold braid on. Can't see Rees-Mogg doing that but he is essentially butting up against parties who have skinheads forming honour guards below their speaking platforms now.
People moaning that there is no real centre seem to be moaning that there is no centre right they can vote for like the Clegg/Cameron coalition or New labour, although that coalition introduced Austerity which was a very right wing plan to redistribute money away from the welfare state to the pockets of rich individuals through whole scale, but under the table, privitisation of education and health services and the Blair government put in place many of the mechanisms the Tories exploited to do that.
The idea that Corbyn is far left shows just how decisively the political ground moved from the 80s onwards, but Corbyn's massive success in building a mass labour movement and pushing Labour polling over 40% shows there are a huge number of people left unrepresented in those years who want a return to pre Neo-liberal politics of the post war period.