Westminstenders Contines. Boris outmaneovered everyone?! Now War and Peace?

[RedToothBrush]

THE BREXIT FALLOUT CONTINUES - THREAD TEN

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This set of threads started out asking if Boris had been outmanoeuvred by Cameron handing him a poison chalice. Fate made it seem as if Boris lost the battle but May has confounded everyone and handed him a second chance. Or so it might seem.

May now has a new Cabinet after a sweeping cull of Cameron's lot. It is more right wing than in a generation. A number of appointments have raised eyebrows. There are plenty of poison chalices and plenty of Brexiteers. Will this create peace in the Tory ranks? Or is it just the calm before the storm

Labour are tearing themselves apart what now seems to be all out civil war. Talk of gerrymandering, violence, disenfranchisement, deselection and intimidation are rife. The seems to be no end in sight, and no prospect of a solution apparent. The question perhaps seems to be when and how, rather than if the party will split, and who will retain the name and party funds.

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So the sad face of British politics in the last two days can be summed up in a single image. Boris and a brick.

Depressed?

I think we have a while to go yet before we hit the bottom.

Excuse me with the intros as I'm starting to struggle to keep up with things myself

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2684990-The-Westminster-Hunger-Games-Contines-May-Day-May-Day Previous Thread Nine

www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/lets-take-back-control-of-the-steering-wheel?utm_term=.kt807jk3D#.vkJmoXQl8

Brexit The Movie II

Owen Smith - the MP
Owen Jones - journalist with very socialist leanings

We all got confused on a previous thread (hence why I'm clarifying the journalist bit)

Smith, Jones all the same...

I thought it a very sad irony that TM said that we stood shoulder to shoulder with the French, after the events in Nice.

After the Brexit vote, I should have added, when we made it clear that a small majority apparently couldn't care less about the rest of Europe.

That article on JC is grim reading, but contains hard truths.
My problem with him - since he first came on the scene in 1983 - and with McDonnell has always been that they don't just "talk" to paramilitaries here & abroad, they support them, honour them and even try to push them towards more violence, often against the UK.

The article reminded me of this:

"So committed was McDonnell, in fact, that during the negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Fein had to ask Tony Blair to keep him quiet, as he was discouraging hardliners from accepting a deal."

He accepts atrocities like IRA bombs, or Iran or the Palestinian Authority executing dissidents or gay people; all because he believes the ends - defeating the UK & the capitalist West - justify the means.
No surprise he isn't much bothered by threats of murder & rape against Labour women who oppose him, or even don't support him enough.

He doesn't feel loyalty to the UK or its people, just to an ideology.
Absurd to even think of him as PM. I regard him as an enemy.

Theresa Villiers deserved to be sacked, after her disgraceful disregard / ignorance of the consequences to NI and the peace process.
I rejoiced over that even more than Gove being booted, tbh

Faisal Islam ‏@faisalislam · 1m1 minute ago

Sturgeon: "crucially this is the most important bit to me, that process will be open to options that Scottish government will bring forward"

He has posted the full transcript on his twitter feed from about 45mins ago (2.45pm).

A very good article from the Economist about why the Boris appointment was a mistake.

And also Davies.

May Delusion

Good article.

Essentially they argue that all the Brexit appointments are for show - to buy short-term domestic peace. But they won't solve any of the very real problems posed by Brexit, in fact since they are incompetent and/or ideologically uncompromising, they may make things worse. I find it hard to argue with that.

I suspect that sooner or later TM will have to go to the country to try to get a new agreement of some sort. There are ways round the Fixed Parliament Acts.

I feel that there is a desperate need for the Centre left i.e. Lib Dems, soft Labour, Greens, moderate Tories even, to get together and try to work for changes which are for the good of the country.

Yes, I know there are problems with the EU, but I personally don't want to be the one to break it.

yy Peregrina

Yes, I know there are problems with the EU, but I personally don't want to be the one to break it.

Thinking more about Will and Capacity from yesterday, I think the weird thing to me about this all along was that I was very aware of how impossible it was.

That I knew there was no capacity to do what was being asked of us.

It was like being asked to vote

Do you want to continue to walk around with your feet on the ground

OR

Do you think the United Kingdom should opt out of the laws of gravity?

And now the people who want to fliat in space have "won" and we all have to twist ourselves out of shape making that happen.

Did you see that the rail minister, Claire Perry, resigned last night because of the ongoing Southern debacle?

I saw the Claire Perry resignation. Was she a new appointment, or a leftover from the Cameron days?

In that article, they ignore the political realities and don't say what else TM could actually do in this impossible situation.

TM had no choice.
Reject the result of the referendum ? Undemocratic. An uprising of half the country
So she had to accept Brexit.

Leavers didn't trust her and many strongly opposed having a PM who was not a Leaver "because they had won"
If TM had appointed Remainers to negotiate, no Leavers would have trusted them or later accepted they had got the best deal possible.
An uprising as soon as the team was announced.
She'd be forced out and Gove or Farage installed as PM.

The 52% have voted for unicorns but very few of them accept this - most Leavers on Mumsnet are posting "we won so it's the government's job to make it happen"
They may see reason over the next 2 years, but not now

So she had to choose from the available Tory Brexiters, about 85 in the HoC and she had to choose names known to the Leavers.
That basically writes in the names she has. The alternative would have been Loathsome instead of Boris at the FO.

Her hope is that her team will discover the realities themselves, once they actually get down to work
I suspect Boris already realises (why TM made him FS) but he needs the support of the other 2 before it is useful for him to admit this publicly

The UK can cancel A50 right up until the very moment we withdraw, so there is time for them to see sense.
TM is no ideologue and has the ovaries to do the right thing. I think she's a responsible PM who wouldn't accept a deal that would seriously damage the economy.
The HoC is Remain and she might have to sacrifice her career to revoke A50, but I think / hope at the end she'd do this.

She had been there for a while. She took part in the debate about Southern on Wednesday:

"She said: "At the moment I do not have the levers to pull to take the franchise back.
"So what are we going to do? If I thought it would help by me falling on my sword, I would."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36805973

NS has tweeted a picture of her and TM shaking hands and said:

Nicola Sturgeon ‏@NicolaSturgeon 2h2 hours ago
Politics aside - I hope girls everywhere look at this photograph and believe nothing should be off limits for them.

Good for her.

Labour's NEC has suspended the Brighton and Hove branch because of concerns about the ballot at the weekend which put pro-Corbyn officers in key posts:
www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/15/labour-suspends-brighton-branch-amid-accusations-of-improper-ballot

It has also scrapped the result of the ballot.

Is it possible? Or is it still impossible? Are we going to have months where we find out that inevitability but instead have it represented as a 'choice' somehow?

Here are some curious questions that still bother me.

Is May a politician who would do the best thing for her country over and above her own career - even if it meant falling on her sword in order to do that?

I thought it curious that May was so supported by the media barons in the end. Its not just about unity. She never struck me as their natural choice as she is not easy to manipulate nor is she 'leaky' even though she got on with Dacre. Is she the clean up candidate, who is dispensable rather than merely being the 'safe pair of hands' to a greater extent than we think?

Every time I see the way forward towards Brexit, I hit a brick wall of 'Really???? How are you going to manage that one then?'

Its not a question of embracing Brexit or not. Nor is it one of being bitter about it. Its one of being bewildered about those bloody unicorns that don't seem to be going away and seem to be haunting.

What if Boris is there TO piss off the rest of the world and MAKE it impossible to get a deal that is in any way palatable? Thus forcing a U-turn?

Maybe I will feel differently, if I see a viable plan or some sane thought descending about this, but at the moment I can't see it. So I can't shift that thing at the back of my head that Brexit means what does it mean?

www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/15/brexit-wont-free-uk-from-paying-for-botched-eu-farming-subsidies-warn-audit-office?CMP=twt_gu Oh and Andrea just got her first shitty stick to deal with.

Just a side note for future ref:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French_presidential_election,_2017 Worth looking at today, and seeing if there is any shift after last night's events

Good analysis BigChoc, but do you think she could have found a place for Gove? Maybe him at Defra, with Loathsome a minor position somewhere?

Agree that the article only criticises the current set up without suggesting any alternatives, possibly because May is indeed caught between a rock and a hard place

My fear is that the calculation that "the Brexiteers will see the realities and come to their senses" may be very optimistic. Boris - yes, probably, and he may be our best PR hope if he doesn't fuck up between now and then. But the others are way too invested emotionally and ideologically. They'll blame the EU for being "unreasonable", they'll blame May for not supporting them enough. But I'm not sure they'll ever admit that they were wrong. The best thing I can hope for is that the media eventually turn against them and expose Project Unicorns for the lie that it is.

PS I'm not convinced that the DM actually wanted Britain to vote Leave. I found them surprisingly half-hearted during the campaign. No one likes losing a convenient bogeyman and provider of populist headlines.

The first copy of The New European just landed on my doorstep! Very excited.

To those asking if Remainers all wanted the same thing, I'll quote this from its editorial:

"...We feel better off within. Maybe because for most of our lives Europe is all we've known and we didn't see any great reason to cut loose a bond that has led to sustained peace and prosperity for a continent with a shudderingly violent history, given us membership to the world's largest trading block and the right of freedom of movement to live, work, learn and love wherever we choose without boundary"

Matt Kelly, Editor

Obviously I can't speak for all of the 48%, but I felt that was a succinct summary.