Dougie Arnott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Owner of EDMF Language Services in 🇭🇺, chairman of Robert Burns International Foundation, 2019 British Empire Medal, father of 3, #Warriornation, #FBPE

[Adam Parkhomenko @AdamParkhomenko]

Can we get 500 retweets as soon as possible on this new ad completely humiliating Donald Trump

[James O'Brien @mrjamesob]

Oh.

[Andy Murray @andy_murray]

Never even liked tennis anyway.

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

REVEALED: the campaigners who dreamed up the contents of Liz Truss’s mini-budget have given the Conservative Party £35m

(Location: 55 Tufton St. Collaboration with Democracy for Sale. Narration by @CarolVorders)

[Dougie Arnott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @dougie_arnott]

@mritgreenock I would laugh but…

[Scotland Rugby News @ScotRugbyNews]

🗣️"I don't understand the rationale"

Gregor Townsend admits he was baffled by the decision made at the end of Scotland's clash with France ⬇️

[Paddy Power @paddypower]

🚨 SIX NATIONS JUSTICE REFUND 🏉

If you bet on Scotland to beat France, we have REFUNDED your bet as a free bet after that cruel last minute decision at Murrayfield.

You're welcome!

Singles only. Match Odds only. No max stake. Retail and online.

#SixNations #SCOvFRA

[Dougie Arnott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @dougie_arnott]

@jimhamilton4 Loves a shoulder tackle mind

[nic 🏁 @nnicolef1]

nothing will ever rival Sebastian Vettel naming every formula 1 world champion from 1950 to 2020 in the correct order

[James O'Brien @mrjamesob]

I don’t know, it’s almost as if industry & manufacturing know more about industry & manufacturing than Rees-Mogg, Dorries, Hannan & Frost… https://t.co/5unRvSfkFf

[ALASTAIR CAMPBELL @campbellclaret]

She often does.

[BBC Sport Scotland @BBCSportScot]

'I always thought he looked ridiculous, but it was then when he was truly happy' 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

On the day that Craig Brown's life is celebrated and remembered, here is a very poignant letter from a fan to the late Scotland manager ❤️

[Dougie Arnott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @dougie_arnott]

And up there with the stupidest comments of the year by a country mile…

[Iain Dale 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧 ⚒️ @IainDale]

Their crime is not to be young. Their crime is to be Conservatives. This criticism comes from the same people who rejoiced in Mhairi Black's election and the election of a 25 year old on Thursday in Selby. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

[Edwin Hayward @edwinhayward]

Here's how the future is going to play out.

(Long - please expand the tweet.)

1. The Tories will wreck everything at an ever increasing pace as the GE approaches, like irresponsible teenagers who know they're not going to be the ones cleaning up the morning after their wild drunken binge.

2. Labour will win the GE on a desperate tide of people wanting to Get the Tories Out, but (and this will be VERY important later) their future freedom to manoevre will be hampered by the bright red lines they laid down on things like Brexit.

3. Labour will start trying to fix some of the stuff the Tories broke. It will prove very expensive. Mending is always more expensive than breaking.

4. Labour will try to Make Brexit Work. The RW tabloids will tear even bigger strips off them than usual.

5. Make Brexit Work won't. Work, that is. Trying to make Brexit work is like trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube after you've brushed your teeth with it.

6. Meanwhile, Labour are having to spend more more more just to keep stuff from literally falling apart (think sewers, water pipes, collapsing schools, crumbling hospitals etc.)

7. Tories watch from the sidelines, laughing and jeering. "Typical Labour. Always spending money they don't have."

8. If they're VERY lucky, Labour will go into the GE-after-next with the overall situation in Britain slightly better than it was when they took office. The country will only be knee-deep in metaphoric and real sewage, rather than thigh deep.

9. The Tories and the RW media will tag team to blame everything that's (still) broken in Britain on Labour. "Same old Labour. Can't be trusted with the economy. Can't be trusted with anything. Can't even fix Brexit, despite their lofty promises."

(Important intermission: Labour will never get fair coverage in our British media. But this is a "known known". They need to figure out how to win, repeatedly, anyway.)

10. GE2: Electric Boogaloo. Labour are stuck. The taunts about having failed their flagship Brexit fixing policy hit home, because they're true. That lubricates the way for all the lies the Tories and RW media are spinning about their wider performance to slip down like honey.

IF Labour pivot towards SM/CU/Rejoin, they might as well tattoo "we wasted 5 years because we didn't have a clue about what we were doing when it comes to Brexit" across their collective foreheads. They may pivot anyway, because the alternative is even worse. This is where those bright red lines (remember them?) will bite them in the fundament so hard they won't be able to sit down for the next six months. Because the press can absolutely legitimately scream "U-turn! Come and see the U-turn so big, it's visible from the Moon." And it will be true.

(Absolutely critical point: there is no "Get the Tories Out" vote. "Ooh, the scary Tories will get back in if you don't vote for us" doesn't have anything like the same impact, especially with non-core Labour voters who lent their votes last time but who are absolutely livid about Labour's failing approach to the Brexit they detest.)

11. Labour lose GE2. A one-term wonder, and they're done. The Tories do what they do best: keep blaming everything on Labour, while picking their looting back up where they left off last time.

-----------

Scroll back up through the scenario above, and look at how Brexit runs through it like a vein pumping pure poison.

That is why Labour need to change their fundamental approach to Brexit, and they need to do so now.

Stop ruling anything out (not saying you won't do something isn't the same as proactively saying you will). Think along the lines of "Labour will do whatever it takes to mitigate the damage Brexit is causing". Make the change far enough ahead of the GE that the fuss about the U-turn is reduced to the constant every-day moaning and carping of the RW press by the time the GE comes around.

Also, Labour need to reconsider PR. It's the only hope they (and we) have of anything approaching long-term stability.

Many of the problems Britain faces will take 2, 3, 4+ election cycles to fix. And they need to be fixed. But the only conceivable way of getting the time necessary to do so is to form long-term partnerships via PR.

That way, you get rid of the short-termism that has dominated British politics to the ruin of us all. (In the current 5-year political cycle, the first year is spent learning the ropes and the last gearing up for the GE, so there are really only 3 even vaguely "productive" years to be wrung out of incumbency.)

Phew, and we're done. You may disagree. You probably will disagree. But please take a very deep breath and a big step back, and think about whether your disagreement comes because it feels genuinely too horrible to contemplate the real world in the stark terms I painted above, and whether your support for a particular political party is blinding you to the reality of what they can achieve in a short 5-year (really 3) period in office.

[Mike H @mikoh123]

Victoria Derbyshire destroying @Bren4Bassetlaw on #Newsnight was tremendous 👋

#r4today #PoliticsLive #PrivilegesCommittee #bbcqt #BorisTheLiar #BorisJohnson

[Adam Bienkov @AdamBienkov]

Ludicrous that just days before Boris Johnson was found to have been in serious contempt of Parliament, and complicit in intimidating a Parliamentary committee, that the Prime Minister rubber-stamped knighthoods and peerages to some of the very people who helped him do it.

[Chirpy Chet @ChirpyChet]

Boris Johnson’s Rise & Fall Has Perfectly Exposed Britain’s Broken Political Culture 👇

A proven liar, relying on the support of some fanatical supporters willing to forgive almost anything, now finally being found out.

#ToriesOut338 #BorisJohnson https://t.co/AzRuzHqW49

[Otto English @Otto_English]

Stop what you are doing.

Watch this.

Chris Patten - daring to tell you the truth in 2 minutes about the ocean of shit we are in.

#bbcqt

[EDMF @EDMFtrans]

With the rise of digital communication, more and more people are using abbreviations, acronyms and slang in their daily conversations. Do you think text messaging changing the way we use language for better or for worse?

[Dougie Arnott 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @dougie_arnott]

@musicmeandtea Where were you climbing? Looks lovely.