Brexit, aka, the UK Becomes a Clown Car of the Highest Order

I think it would be more helpful to discuss what you think are the specific moral failings of specific Brexiteers than try and just link them all to Trump.

The distinction being that people who supported the GOP put and are keeping Trump in power, whereas people who support Brexit are not putting any specific politician in power (and particularly not Farage, who seems most deserving of the “Trump” comparison).

Boris confirmed out too.

The fact that they seem to be owned by the Russians.

Now we’re talking.

Presumably he wouldn’t have resigned unless he knew enough 1922 committee letters were inbound.

I thought you were coming from a place of uninformed generalization and you’ve managed to confirm it.

Are you seriously suggesting that Boris Johnson is “owned by the Russians”?

BOOM!

Of course if recent Tory history is any indication, we will end up in Worst Future where the vote is triggered but May wins 52% of the MPs and carries on…

The Brexit movement was largely driven by Russian propaganda, as a mechanism by which to damage western alliances.

And one of the primary funders of Brexit repeatedly met with the Russians.

In terms of being owned by Russians, this applies more to guys like Nigel Farange than Boris, at least as far as I know today.

I think you underestimate how Brexity the country has always been, and in particular the tabloid press. Hating on the EU has been a national past-time for decades. Largely driven is just not true, any more than the conservative movement in the US was largely driven by Russian propaganda.

Heading over to the beeb to see what’s going down.

Those horrible sounds you hear of clashing steel teeth are Boris’ gears grinding as he tries to figure out if at long last he should stand for PM or if the next one will also be a sacrifice. My dearest hope is that he and the other plotters should keep on shying away, retreating, resigning, and demurring until their party has completely lost its grip.

That’s totally possible, given I only view this from outside through a lens of our own bullshit over here.

Although the conservative movement for the past few years in the US absolutely has been largely driven by Russian propaganda.

Why is that inherently ridiculous? Farage is. Based on behavior, Boris’s chum Rupert Murdoch is as well. (Though “owned” is a bit strong for Rupert. Perhaps “Engaged in a mutually beneficial business arrangement between oligarchs” would fit better.)

But we’re not talking about things that happened twenty years ago. We’re talking about right now. The preponderance of evidence suggests that many conservatives in both the UK and the US are comfortably in the pockets of Putin and his oligarchs right now, regardless of what might have been true twenty years ago. We just saw US senators go to Moscow literally on the 4th of July and come back with marching orders to remove the Crimea sanctions.

(That being said, it would be hard to buy Boris. Not because of any scruples, but because he’s always been an opportunist first and foremost.)

The existence of a Russia propaganda campaign, and indeed the cooperation of Brexit campaigners with it, doesn’t make the movement largely driven by it. It would have existed, and very clearly did exist, anyway. The only meaningful difference between right now and twenty years ago is that we had a referendum, which itself was a function of the conservative party’s own longstanding divisions being laid bare by the coalition government and very little if anything to do with Russia.

And besides, the UK has been in the pocket of Russian oligarchs for a long time, regardless of the party in power. There’s a reason London is known as Moscow-on-Thames. We haven’t quite gone as far as Malta in terms of just selling citizenship, but it’s not far off.

This is a fair statement. Although I suspect that the Russian propaganda played a major role in it actually happening, since the vote was so close.

I mean, Boris was making shit up to bash the EU as Brussels correspondent for the Torygraph back in the early 90s. Was he in Putin’s pocket then?

People were making shit up to bash Hillary Clinton in the early 1990s too…doesn’t mean that Russian propaganda didn’t play a role in her defeat in 2016.

The Brexit campaign arose from conservative political infighting between malicious Tory factions. It was inflamed by their foolish fears of UKIP, which they would have been wise to laugh out of consideration, and not to base their policy on. The vote itself was considered by people like Cameron and May to be a way of breaking the Brexit movement because of course it wouldn’t succeed. But the complacent leadership didn’t count on the well-nigh universal hatred they’d inspired of their policies and persons, and didn’t realize that a substantial percentage of yes votes would be tallied as votes of no confidence from the public, not intended as actual votes in favor of secession… because of course the no vote would win. Similar widespread public contempt for Milliband broke Labor’s opposition.

In those conditions, I doubt the Russians had to do all that much, but of course they were doing all they could, and any degree of corruption they could manage, direct or indirect, would naturally be employed. So while neither Johnson nor Corbyn may be paid-for Russian pawns, both no doubt saw the way the wind was blowing, and both have allowed that Russian wind to fill their sails and direct their courses.

That seems a pretty good characterization of things.

So meanwhile…popcorn…

This.