Gareth Oakland 🇫🇷🏏🏉

I know. Or Les îles normandes. What a shambles this thing called TUKOGBANI is.

Rather like Churchill in fact.

(I know I know, but I’m just a man who likes stuff to be absolutely EXPLICIT!).

That’s interesting. Thank you.

There’s always been a movement for a “Europe of regions” rather than a “Europe of nations”. I remember doing a study for my MBA on the Kent/Pas de Calais region. Unlikely in the current set up of course.

Is there a Manx Green Party?

One pound coin

I’m sure I saw a unicorn. And a lion. And three leopards

I guess none are good British animals though.

What utter nonsense.

Does Sinn Féin not count as one? As in independence from the UK anyway…

I mean, it all an imaginary construct isn’t it? We have Northern Irish peers in House of Lords but there are none from the largest party. Lords! Including some Ulster religious people. Mad.

But - and I’ve never voted for them because FPTP and where I live - most parties have to deal with the ideologically pure and the pragmatic election messages. The Greens will be no different. They have two or three years to get this stuff sorted out.

So I think the complication for him is as much personal - he finds this stuff difficult - as party political. And remember until really recently the Greens were a long long way from even a potential coalition partner. Now they are having to deal with some of the contradictions. That’s a good thing.

The 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 flag stuff has made a lot of people (including me) uncomfortable with “Ingerland” and what it has come to represent. “Reclaim it” isn’t that easy. Nationalism really IS complex. As someone who shares some of his European and Jewish heritage, I can sympathise with the “squirm” around this.

Hard agree.

Parsley too.

I made enough for two. But the missus had “already told me” she didn’t want any “just salad”. The problem with this is she will often say “no chips, no spuds”…and then “oh well maybe one or two”. It’s like the bloody trolley problem. Tonight? None.

Daily Mail Headline: Pupils' drawings could be blasphemous under Islamic law, Labour councils tell schools - while music and dance classes may go against the teachings of Islam

Oh boy! What a headline...

Ask yourself:

"What am I being asked to believe?"

"Who am I being told to blame?"

Take a few seconds to imagine what the Daily Mail (And Telegraph, GB News and Express) WANT you to think is going on.

Let's see what's ACTUALLY happening...🧵

1/21

Tuna and salad

Ginger and lime works very well. Not sure about the coriander tbh. Too many spuds.

Tuna. Lime. Ginger.

Super healthy dinner tonight. Trying the ginger paste with lime on yellowfin tuna.

In fact I’d say that, especially in a FPTP system, ALL the UKs main parties have to do this. Even the Farage vehicle is trying to be “a serious political party” AND placate the nutters who make up their base.

I suspect you have exactly this in both the wider Labour movement and the membership of the LD.

Goodness, the notion that Zionism is racism has been debated on the left since before my undergraduate days, when I was first in Israel exactly 50 years ago.

He does accept that challenge. He’s been in the job a short time, building a broader base must be a long term project. And “the party” will want to have a say (which may well be different to his personal view). Nobody should expect a fully worked out manifesto at this stage of the cycle.

Well perhaps we are reading the same thing and coming to different conclusions. I suspect some of that may be deliberate, as you suggest, and what any politician hoping to build a broad base has to do. I hope though that some of it is genuinely questioning and seeking. But I’m an optimist.

There you go. I’m happy with that (though your cultural markers are white, straight, Christian, men so there is that of course).

I would add cricket and fair play. Church architecture. Cities and villages.

I like politics and politicians that challenge me to think. Otherwise it’s just Kemi and Nige.

Yes that’s certainly a way. But these things called “nation states” are not necessarily fixed forever. In our lifetime we’ve seen lots of new European ones. And the current borders of the UK are only just over 100 years old. We should approach this with open minds.

My idea?

Yes I do see that point.

I think he’s showing how complex this debate is. Largely because “independence” and “nationalism” are such loaded words. Especially for a convinced “internationalist”. And how these terms (globalist!) have been hijacked by the right makes progressives squirm around them.

But isn’t he also a convinced European and supporter of global institutions? Campaigning for reintegration with EU and all the ceding of national power that represents? Does that make a difference to the “smaller bits of UK but inside a much bigger political entity”?

And - honestly last “and” - it’s not as though the UK is unique in Europe in asking these questions. Catalans, Basques, Walloons, Bretons, Slovaks, all the Yugoslavs in my lifetime have all asked and answered them. Silesians, Savoyards and Alsatians before them.

Should just say that I’m not a Green. Never even voted for them. Maybe I would under a different system. Locally they’re doing some good work.

Is “It’s not something I want to drive” really “advocating to create a nation”? That piece about independence being freedom from oppressors? There may be different solutions that work for the component parts of UK inside European and global structures. Acknowledging complexity should be welcome.

He IS an interesting politician. And he may not have a settled view on this subject. Or how it plays into the party’s European or Global stances.

I think that’s fine. We need people who can say “look it’s complicated and I’d like to hear what others say”.

Sadly, most new development proposals talk the talk about sustainability and transport and deliver entirely car-centricity.

I hate the “but you don’t pay tax” people. As though cycling somehow exempts you.

Ah well. We’ll always have our smug Lycraclad wokeness to keep us glowing.