Verbal

Could you have a word with your lords and masters at Vote Leave to rig this competition so I win?

Actually Shylock W@nkstein (as al-Tenderi calls him) is factually correct. There's actually a long sociological tradition in studying deferential Tory voters. See for example Frank Parkin's 'Working Class Conservatives: a Theory of Political Deviance'.

It's not me you need to tell to cheer up, sunshine. It's the people who do and will depend on food banks for their family meals. It's the people who lose their jobs in places like Llanelli in order to satisfy the Brexit elite's desire to create Singapore-by-the-Thames, or the people who depend on treatments from a health service starved of 'queue-jumping' doctors and nursing staffs and opened up to rampaging US 'health' corporations. So why not try your ignorant twaddle on these victims of Brexit? I'm sure they'll be thrilled to have you in their midst.

Quite so. The misery that either version of Brexit will visit on people just hanging on will be horrific. Yet al-Tenderi and his explosive ilk only really get upset when legitimate comparisons are made between him and other death cultists, who also revel in wrecking others' lives on the altar of some version of a fantasised 'sunlit uplands'.

1. "Canada+++" is not a 'decent deal'. It's a completely made up, three-unicorn deal. (Assume each '+' = 1 x unicorn.) It's not on offer and never was. 2. The Brexit you voted for - but which you've now admitted you didn't do enough reading about (and still haven't) - will entail a severe loss of both sovereignty and economic well-being. The loss of sovereignty in the short term is in the unprecedented loss of participation in the EU decision-making process; the loss in the long term will be in the corrosive effects of FDAs, particularly with large, much more powerful countries, who will demand binding arbitration in FDA courts weighted in their favour, and, most of all, in the removal of non-tariff barriers giving foreign private health corporations unlimited access, principally, to the national health service. 3. Working on Ress-Mogg's estimate of 50 years before the economic damage of Brexit is repaired, all of the above means, in practice, that while you can airily dismiss 'the economy' as not worthy of your attention, hundreds of thousands of people in this country will lose their livelihoods. Well done you! In view of all this, the murmurs I'm hearing from within the Labour party is of a need to plug the enormous hole being ripped out of the economy - and one proposal is to have a tax raid on private pension pots. That's one policy I can get completely behind. Let the people who'll have caused such misery - and it IS mostly middle class, comfortable, unchallenged pensioners - foot the bill. I'm sure you'll agree you should be responsible for your actions, right?

Then you haven't read nearly enough. Neither Chequers nor the actual withdrawal agreement can ever be 'that deal' because neither is an FTA. That comes next - assuming the WA ever gets through parliament - and would take the next four to ten years to negotiate. Logically, you should wait and see, but your cult membership prevents you applying logic.

Kaboom!

I suggest you (a) calm down, and (b) spin back through this thread where I've made the case for the comparison of Brexit Jihadists and actual ones - namely, as Shylock has reminded you, in deontological fundamentalism. To paraphrase, they have the same mindset. And I have to tell you, my southern-counties provincial chum, the comparison is made having dealt first-hand with actual Jihadists, and having seen some of the results of their handiwork. The same cult-like fixation on circular arguments infects them both. You also find it in conspiracy theorists - and actually all Jihadists I've encountered are also firm believers in the weirdest conspiracies (my least favourite being that polio vaccinators are injecting George Bush's pee into people's veins, or are injecting a concealed contraceptive aimed at reducing the Muslim population - all deadly arguments because people have died as a consequence). Now for the really bad news. Your conspiracist belief that the ERG, along with other no-deal fundos, represent some sort of stand-alone defence of the 'will of the people', and that the rest of the body politic is a corrupted force hell-bent on denying your weird take on what the referendum was about, is entirely consistent with Jihadist ideation. So have a little think.

Yet again Jihadist HQ at the ERG can't get their act together, even to carry out their own coup. This is after their hilarious failure to agree their own alternative proposals to Chequers. So they can't act upon the thing they can't express. They'd rather just strap a suicide vest on the country's economy and run for their own tax-haven shelters.

Project fear! And you seem to have a thing about talking up violence.

Christ this is some huge pile of stupid. Talking of which, the government's chief negotiator of the Brexit agreement has resigned over...the agreement.

You're both doing the same thing, which is fantasising about violence against a poster on here. Cut it the fu ck out.

It's really another way of saying that Brexiteers are deontological fundamentalists. I'm not sure this term would take on a football forum. So 'Jihadists' it is.

That would make him the author, not the instrument. Aside from that, I agree.

People forget the key instrument in this mess. There was a reason why the referendum was only 'advisory'. It was so that a super-majority wouldn't be needed in the result (say, two-thirds majority). Only after the legislation was passed for the referendum did Cameron and then May double down on treating the outcome as compulsory - but now shorn of the fairness required in a decisive vote. It's why some argue quite convincingly that this is a coup, in which national interests, including national prosperity, are trashed in favour of a clique of hedge-funders and super-rich whose interests are served by demolishing the commitments and taxes of a welfare state. That this is also Putin's desired outcome is relevant (and Farage is where the two strands meet).

Orange on the outside, yellow on the inside. This is fascinating - if you ever wondered about the deep ideological connection of Trump to Russia, and especially Putin, watch this (it also puts conspiracy fu ckwits, on here and elsewhere, to shame): https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000006210828/russia-disinformation-fake-news.html?action=click&gtype=vhs&version=vhs-heading&module=vhs&region=title-area&cview=true&t=931

That's a devastating thread, and should be read by all Jihadists so that they know what anti-British vandals they really are.

When the other Sherlock swings by to solve the Case of the Forum Murders, he ain't going to have to look far, pal. And don't rile up Lord T. He knows the Von W@nkstains can trace their roots back to the Exodus.

Agreed. He's very Rothschildish.

I have to say I admire Jihadi John's determination to hang on, limpet-like, to his inability to interpret data. He's a bit like a man falling from a tall building clinging on to a napkin because he thinks it'll come in handy as a parachute. I wonder what the outcome will be?

Leadership doesn't work in the same way in the US as here. Party leadership happens at various important levels - governorships, the House, the Senate and the Presidency. When your party doesn't have the presidency, these other localised leaderships are particularly important, and the Democrats are well-led in some areas. Pelosi is widely admired, but there are strong up-and-comers too, like Kamala Harris, and recent breakthroughs like Beto O'Rourke (even though he lost to the reptilian Cruz). If you're thinking of Bernie Sanders, remember he isn't actually a Democrat. Sadly, Corbyn is a Labour member, and by far the worst leader in the history of the party.

Odd little paranoid world you live in. Was the TV you were watching actually switched on? Sopel was if anything underplaying the consequences of the election for Trump. Evidence of its awfulness for the orange one has just arrived with his panicked firing of Sessions. Mueller and tax returns now on their way...

Wherever the Saintsweb finger is, it certainly isn't on the pulse. No one notice there was an election yesterday and Trump got pied?

It reminds me quite a lot of Nancy MacLean's thesis in Democracy in Chains, which is about a plot, originated supposedly with James McGill Buchanan, to repeal the 17th amendment. I've no doubt there are people out there who think in this malevolent way (Barclays come to mind, the bros not the bank - poor men's Kochs). It's much less clear that they have the actual power to deliver on their libertarian smash-and-grab fantasy.

Corrected that for you Mr Sprout.