7 Comments

  1. As the old Texan saying goes “Rattlesnakes don’t commit suicide”.

    Serves these anti-democratic bastards right.

  2. RR has always been an unpleasant piece of work, but he seems to have done some good this time!

  3. If we can just get over the Schadenfreude for a minute. Not easy, but I think there is something to be gained in asking just how it is they’ve ballsed up this way?

    On the face of it it looks like sabotage. The fact that they were doing so well, just before the key moment in their history and preparing for that well, suggests skullduggery. Except that all the participants have impeccable remainer pedigrees.

    Is it a row about strategy perhaps? In the article there is mention of a disagreement about whether PV should just be trying to get a second referendum or be a participant in that referendum. That sounds a petty disagreement especially given that one must follow the other. It’s also one that can easily be resolved.

    The only thing I can think of is that remainers are naturally petty types and it doesn’t take much for them to fall out with each other. This is comforting and therefore probably wrong.

    Esprit d’escalier: maybe they realised they’re going to lose. Nah, that’s not obvious.

  4. This all started when RR sacked two staffers in “an email sent at 9pm on the Sunday before the election was called”

    Fascinating timing.

  5. On the other hand, there is reason to doubt “The fact that they were doing so well”.

    We have one of the sacked blokes saying, “We are ready to launch the biggest and most sophisticated tactical voting campaign this country has ever seen”.

    We also have people saying “There are dozens of people who have not done a full day of work in weeks. You end up getting shouted at in a meeting so you just go home” and “It’s a completely unworkable, dysfunctional campaign at the moment. I have never been part of one that has so little accountability.”

    Maybe it was completely useless and ready to fall apart anyway and Rudd was just trying to sort it out with a reorganisation that turned out to just bring things to a head quickly instead of fixing anything.

  6. I have worked in a couple of political offices where no one knew what they were supposed to be doing. I assumed this was unusual or maybe something that happened when you had lawyers in charge. Maybe not. But you really would have thought that the prospect of the UK leaving the EU would galvanise remainers.

  7. Slightly off topic, but to be working at a place where there is too little to do and no one is clear what you should be doing is one of those experiences that sounds fun until it actually happens to you. I literally have bad dreams about it decades later.

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