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

flippinada I am haunted by that picture. think its probably the same one. makes me want to get DD from school and never leave the house again :(

Oh yes, that's right about the tartan suit. Very clever.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall at that meeting!

I wonder if May would be prepared to sacrifice N Ireland, even though the DUP are propping up her slender majority?

Gibraltar, I imagine some sort of independent fudge could be cobbled together.

Another trade killer is non-tariff barriers, which are usually slightly different between EU and US etc

Every aspect of every component in a widget has regulations & standards that must be fulfilled, depending on the type of goods:
e.g. additives in plastic coating, tolerances in machining, durability, recyclability (environmental rules), behaviour under different temperature and humidity, impact safety ....

The 10 million regulations everyone complains about wrt the EU, but are just as complex for say exporting to the USA or Japan

Companies have entire departments ensuring they fulfil all these and have their certifications for each product

We would of course just take over the EU regs, but without a trade agreement, our UK inspectors can't certify that they have been fulfilled.
So they might be inspected from scratch at the port of entry into whatever country we were sending them - at the cost of the exporter, of course.

Utter nightmare.

I am largely clueless on NI politics, and tend to shy away from it, because I know there are layers upon layers of the past which influence everything happening now, but is there any chance of NI coming up with a coherent position which it can then present to TM with a majority of politicians backing it?

Erm, not easily. Not unless it gets closely tied to the Good Friday agreement, which is just about the only thing that has managed to get cross party support apart from propping up anti-abortion legislation which the EU and their Human Right's Law say is unlawful and needs to be changed...

Sacrifice NI in what way?

Yes Katie it probably is. So sad.

By Sacrifice NI, I meant, tell them to join with the Republic. It would not be popular though among the Protestants.

but is there any chance of NI coming up with a coherent position which it can then present to TM with a majority of politicians backing it?

This question made me

:(

Then then :(

Honestly, I can't see it.

The DUP backed Brexit.

They want their walled statelet back.

It's a crazy prospect for the welfare of NI.

What is likely to happen, is that both SF and DUP will start into their veiled (but sadly realistic) threats of a return to violence.

Hopefully Brokenshire is hard as nail and smart as a tack.

And also hopefully May won't be too accommodating of that. Cameron wasn't, to his credit.

But opening the door to her interest inaimtaining the Union and courting Sturgeon so obviously will be raising eyebrows all over the place here.

'By Sacrifice NI, I meant, tell them to join with the Republic. It would not be popular though among the Protestants.'

Well it wouldn't be very popular with the Republic either and there'd have to be a referendum on it there too. The Republic would say no.

By Sacrifice NI, I meant, tell them to join with the Republic. It would not be popular though among the Protestants.

It wouldn't be popular with the Catholics either.

Or Ireland.

And it would be completely illegal.

Ireland's going through a very fragile economic recovery and there's no way it could afford to take NI on.

What's the opposite of unicorns? Because some people are just as intent on seeing them everywhere.

Minotaurs?

Even if you think leaving the EU is a stupud idea, it is not very likely that our entire manufacturing industry (paltry as it is) would be destroyed immediately if we went onto WTO tariffs in a couple of years time.

I figured out where I'd seen this - it actually comes from the Brexit economists themselves.

The really hardcore Economists for Brexit want this and see it as a positive

Prof Minford said that outside the EU “it seems likely that we would mostly eliminate manufacturing, leaving mainly industries such as design, marketing and high-tech. But this shouldn’t scare us”.

next.ft.com/content/1745f3c2-0d16-11e6-b41f-0beb7e589515

But that's probably an extreme ideological position rather than a realistic prospect, agreed.

Of course we wouldn't lose the entire manufacturing industry or all services.
We won't become Biafra.

However, we would lose hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of jobs and a huge amount of tax revenue.
New startups take time and they don't suddenly employ umpteen thousand people and pay millions in tax (they mostly crash in the first couple of years too)

The City alone accounts for 10% of our GDP and a heck of a lot of revenue.
We wouldn't have the current resources for the nhs or for unemployment oay - which would have to cover far more people
We import half our food and lots of raw materials. We have to export to pay for all this.

I'd expect it to be much more damaging for the UK than the 2008 financial crisis.

I have just seen this blog come up on twitter, and I admit I'm hesitant about posting it for a variety of reasons - not least the timing. However I think it is an interesting debate and probably should be seen - it also does fit in somewhat with the current strain conversation.

However I don't want to pass comment myself on it. It IS sensitive and inflammatory. Proceed with caution.

thegerasites.wordpress.com/2016/07/14/labour-leadership-1-the-immorality-of-corbynism/

Ireland's going through a very fragile economic recovery and there's no way it could afford to take NI on.

True, although they could tap the EU up for some serious structural funds and some concessions if they were to agree to taking that on.

But politically it would be absolutely impossible.

Also May may was clear about the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Without NI, it's just Great Britain.

Minford sounds at least honest about what he is prepared to sacrifice and I basically agree with those predictions.
Of course, we would also lose the City of London as the world financial centre - a huge chunk of proiftable services gone there

I'm on the geeky science side, but work to develop high tech widgets.
I don't know if those not working for complex manufacturing firms actually realise the horrendous number of regulations governing everything, the certification procedures. Or how price sensitive some components are, how time-sensitive to get to market.

'politically it would be absolutely impossible.'

Yup.

Irish people just don't dream about a United Ireland in the way they used to a few decades back. Time has moved on and NI and Ireland have forged their own separate identities. I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd jump for joy at the thought of a united Ireland at any cost but they're certainly not the majority.

indy100.independent.co.uk/article/heres-what-jeremy-corbyn-has-to-say-about-the-new-tory-cabinet--byleeXzATHW

What JC said about the new cabinet.

They don't dream about a united Ireland.

But nor do they dream about an island with a hard EU external border running across it.

The English have done us all a really shit deal here.

How we get out of it, I have no idea.

'The English have done us all a really shit deal here.'

I certainly agree with that.

Most English don't have a fucking clue about it though. And if they do, they don't care. That's the trouble.

I remember my first trip to NI being 'a bit of a culture shock'.

And also a wonder, beautiful place.

Yes, a shit deal indeed. I wasn't trying to say that NI should join with the Republic BTW. The Good Friday agreement was one consideration I thought about when voting for Remain, and I think (probably already said this on one of the other threads), that it's almost criminal to squander Peace in N Ireland.

I am just still incredulous that the Brexiteers think that this can all be done and dusted in a couple of years. Even if we knew what we wanted, I still think it would take 10 years.

medium.com/@matatatatat/the-terrifying-hubris-of-corbynism-6590054a9b57#.c4u2o27kf
Another Corbyn essay - shared by Owen Jones (the journo!) Interesting reading.