Boris outmaneovered. Et tu Gove & Corbyn? The Westministenders Hunger Games Continues

[RedToothBrush]

Following the Machiavellian Govian shambles? Utterly gobsmacked at the Labour clusterfuck?

Who will strike next?

Who will the shadowy hand of Osborne back?
Can Gove be launched back into space and back to the planet he came from?
Can May save the country from almost certain doom?
Will Leadsom patronise us all to death (whilst silently stabbing people in the back with a sweet smile)?
Can Johnson make a decision he can stick to, and can we persuade him to give up being a politician?
Will Steven Crabb get rid of that god awful beard?

Will Corbyn shoot himself in the other foot?
Will Angela Eagle get a spine and just stand?
Who the fuck is Owen Smith?
Will the Blairites be foiled and damned?
Are momentum a bunch of thugs or a force for a better, for the people?

Will Farage disappear back under his rock?
Will people wake up to Arron Banks?
What will Dominic Cummings destroy next?

Have we seen a coup d'état?
How do we improve democracy and representation?

All these questions and more.
Sense of humour compulsory. No experience necessary though

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2670552-Has-Boris-been-outmanoeuvred?pg=1 Previous thread 1

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2672388-Has-Boris-been-outmanoevered-Will-someone-please-tell-me-who-is-in-charge Previous thread 2

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/a2673982-Have-Boris-and-Jeremy-been-stabbed-in-the-back-Please-can-we-have-some-leaders Previous thread 3

Do we think a peerage is in Farage's future?

I think a campaign for one is probably in his future.

Is Gove a closet UKIPper?

I think that depends on whose hand is operating him on any given day.

Is Gove a closet UKIPper?

I think that depends on whose hand is operating him on any given day.

Eeek. That just brings up the mental picture of that headline from the other day about Osborne's fingers being behind Gove standing.

I think the implication that communities voted leave because they are at rock bottom and it's the only way they could get their voices heard doesn't fit at all the castle point and Thurrock that I know well. It's an over simplification.

Hey, I'm not suggesting there aren't other groups with their own loathsome reasons for voting leave. What I was attempting to do was make sense of why people who stand to really, really lose out from exiting the EU voted for it anyway, and, crucially, why it is in some respects a good thing that the referendum isn't simply going to be re-run as if that vote had never happened. If one good thing comes out of a rigid adherence to the outcome we got, it must surely be an acknowledgement of how divided the country is along class lines, despite years of 'prosperity' rhetoric.

I don't doubt that by appeasing the electorate with a Brexit that very few in parliament wanted, the goal is to avoid dealing with all those tricky structural issues that the referendum has starkly highlighted. If we are to be stuck with Brexit, at least pro tem, my point is that we should hold the government to account and make them do both. In the long term, it may be that re-entry to the EU could be possible if a better understanding could be propagated as to who is the bad guy in this picture.

I doubt very much if the 70-something Conservative heartland vote is amenable to similar logic. I'm afraid we will just have to wait for a critical mass of them to die.

The theory don't fit the west London leavers, which is a high level of mixed ethnicity and a Tory heartland.

why people who stand to really, really lose out from exiting the EU voted for it anyway

Imo no one knows how this is going to pan out - ditto why the Leave politicians don't have much to say.
The EU is such a web of complicated payments/ taxes/ rules/ legislation that no one actually knows what will happen or the doom sayers would be giving more actual facts.
No one is giving facts at the mo.
No reason why the money that went to EU can't now go direct to the areas that voted leave........ or anywhere else of course.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nigel-farage-basically-said-cant-8345800

A Mirror Columnist translates Farage's resignation speech.

why people who stand to really, really lose out from exiting the EU voted for it anyway

They don't believe it. They are getting their sovereignty back. This makes them very happy.

Knives sharpening for Junker

Oooooo interesting news:
www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/04/eastern-bloc-countries-demand-less-centralised-europe?CMP=twt_gu
Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia emerge as determined lobby in opposition to EU’s founding fathers

Not necessarily something that will help us, but its an interesting development.

Already, there appears to be a stuggle to get central European voices heard in the post-Brexit debate. There was fury among V4 members when, the day after the Brexit result was revealed, only the foreign ministers from the EU’s six founding states were invited to Berlin by the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to pledge their support for an “ever closer union”. Steinmeier and Jean-Marc Ayrault, his French counterpart, ended the meeting with a petition for a political union constructed around the euro.

For countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary that have not adopted the euro – and which say it makes sense to do so only once their citizens’ incomes are higher – the nightmare scenario is a two-speed Europe in which their interests would be a low priority. “If Britain had voted to stay in the EU and carved out its own niche with various opt-outs, that would have made an alternative model of EU membership more realistic,” Pawel Swidlicki, a policy analyst at thinktank Open Europe, said. “Now that Britain is leaving, the Visegrád Four have to answer some tough questions.”

Cracks in the EU showing? Something we can take advantage of?

No reason why the money that went to EU can't now go direct to the areas that voted leave

Indeed. My whole point is that we should make sure it does. Not necessarily directly, but that systematic underinvestment in regions that are not 'of use' in the pursuit of the appearance of growth and prosperity needs to stop. And not that it is anywhere near as much as stated, of course, even before we get on to lost EU grants and subsidies.

I don't think it is that unclear how this is going to pan out tbh, which is precisely why the Leave politicians don't have much to say. Presumably also why many (most?) of them have been vociferously anti-Brexit in the past, before an opportunity for personal advancement presented itself.

You'll have a terrific job trying to convince pissed off Remainers that their dwindling money now has to go towards the people of Sunderland - who voted themselves out of work - and the people of Cornwall who voted themselves out of EU subsidies.

This could send Labour into the Wilderness for years.

The money that went to the EU (and a lot more) will be wiped out as the country goes into recession. There will be a lot less to go around for everyone unfortunately.

Westminster voting intention:
CON: 37% (+1)
LAB: 30% (-2)
UKIP: 15% (-)
LDEM: 8% (+1)
GRN: 4% (-1)
(via ICM, online / 01 - 03 Jul)

why people who stand to really, really lose out from exiting the EU voted for it anyway

They don't believe it. They are getting their sovereignty back. This makes them very happy.

Sad but true. The Remain campaign was so bland with retrospect, on top of decades of blaming the EU for everything the least bit irritating in public life. Assuming Brexit, and more worryingly a potential Frexit, don't turn out to be terminal for the EU, I can foresee a time 5 or 10 years down the line when people start to realise Brexit wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Whether that gets blamed retrospectively on the EU and the cost to us of 'escaping' or whether people wake up to the fact that they were sold a pup depends imo on the political ideas that find their way into the popular imagination. I am trying to be positive here, because the referendum result has devastated me, but I do think there are ways that ordinary people can shape the political debate and the sort of society we become post-Brexit, which could see us become part of a united Europe again in the future. I hope so anyway. The alternative is to leave for elsewhere, which seems a crappy giving up kind of a thing to do, and also is not possible for everyone.

You'll have a terrific job trying to convince pissed off Remainers that their dwindling money now has to go towards the people of Sunderland - who voted themselves out of work - and the people of Cornwall who voted themselves out of EU subsidies.

Well, quite. It is always a terrific job convincing anyone to share resources. Hence a succession of nasty Conservative governments put in power by an abject fear of tax-and-spend and, of course, the Brexit vote itself.

Am I really the only person who thinks it's worth trying to turn that trend around?

Cracks in the EU showing? Something we can take advantage of?

I don't quite know what to make of this. Britain was the V4's strongest ally in the EU, so one would think their position has been weakened?

I'm also struggling to figure out what they want exactly - they don't want more integration, and they also don't want a two-speed Europe that would let the eurozone integrate while leaving them in peace. So what do they want? the status quo? That's not going to work either :-/

UKIP spokeswoman Suzanne Evans says she thinks Nigel Farage must have concluded that his "lifetime's work has been achieved" and therefore she understands his decision to quit.

But she tells The World at One she was surprised, as Mr Farage had seen UKIP as "his baby".

Ms Evans says it's unlikely she can run for the party leadership as she is currently suspended - because, in her words, "I challenged homophobia in the party."

She tells Wato she believes UKIP is "not a one-man band or a single issue party", adding:

I see UKIP as being a party of the common sense centre ground."

Did she really just say 'I see the centre of politics being homophobic'?!

I am curious to see what this New European paper is like:

www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/jul/04/archant-launches-pop-up-paper-to-serve-people-who-voted-remain

Just to lighten things, I can reveal that when my partner told me about a new 'pop-up newspaper', I thought he meant some kind of joky, comic book style triumph of paper engineering. Which would have been cool, I thought.

I saw Sam Coates of the Times saying that Cameron was hoping to hang onto the Tory leadership until after attending the G20 summit on 4-5 September, because he wants a big farewell photo shoot with Obama and the like.

Can't help but hope he doesn't get his wish.

"I'm also struggling to figure out what they want exactly - they don't want more integration, and they also don't want a two-speed Europe that would let the eurozone integrate while leaving them in peace. So what do they want? the status quo? That's not going to work either :-/"

They want the EU to stay as a union of sovereign states. They don't want to be part of a United States of Europe, but they don't want the Eurozone countries to form a United States of Europe and leave them out in the cold either. Preventing that will be more difficult without the UK inside the EU though.

Thanks. So they want the status quo, but "better" - better how?!

It's clearly not a good idea to have more EU-wide integration if they're not up for it, there would be no better recipe for the rise of populism.

But I don't really see the problem with a two-speed EU that would have a deeply-integrated core and some more loosely associated members that get to be in the Single Market while staying fully sovereign, isn't that the best of both worlds?

But I don't really see the problem with a two-speed EU that would have a deeply-integrated core and some more loosely associated members that get to be in the Single Market while staying fully sovereign, isn't that the best of both worlds?

Would the EU actually agree to that though? Aren't they pushing more towards the United States of Europe kind of thing?

Official Leave campaign thank you email omits Andrea Loathsom.

The email also makes mention of the Conservative leadership contest, but only singles out two hopefuls only, Theresa May and Michael Gove whom it refers to as the "leading" In and Out candidates, respectively.

And the email adds: "Not all the candidates in the Conservative leadership campaign have shown an ability to deliver big changes in the face of civil service opposition."

Ouch.

A two speed Europe would be shit for any country not on the faster track.

If some countries want a new, closer arrangement, then why shoukd they get to use the institutions of the EU to facilitate that against the wishes of other members?

There is already a very clear sense that the newer accession countries aren't quite as important as the old hands.

But there is currently no legal basis for that.

Two-speed Europe is an attempt to force countries who joined the EU into a peripheral position they don't want.

Aren't they pushing more towards the United States of Europe kind of thing?

I don't think so no, because they know it's really unpopular in some countries. From what I understand the two-speed Europe system is what France would like - a more integrated eurozone, if only because it would help solve some of its economic problems. Seems a reasonable compromise to me. (My reasoning is more democracy-based though, I think we can only solve the democratic deficit with more political integration)

Germany don't seem happy with this though, at least in part because Merkel thinks it's really important to keep eastern europe on board - that's my really vague understanding of the reasoning anyway lol.