Westminstenders Continues. Boris is having a bad week. Corbyn resists. Its gonna be a long summer.

[RedToothBrush]

THE BREXIT FALLOUT CONTINUES - THREAD ELEVEN

The dust is beginning to settle and the storm has abated. At least for the moment. The summer is about to start, and so there may be a break in proceeding.

May has had quite a first week both here and abroad.

The ground has not stopped shaking from the political ripples abroad. Made PM on Weds, Nice on Thursday and a failed coup in Turkey on Friday. The political landscape has changed once again.

At home she first cleared out the Govians and called for loyalty. She channelled the ghost of Maggie at the despatch box. She started the process of trying to make friends with Scots, Germans and the French. She is apparently now Merkel's bestie. Sturgeon is already ousted from that position after just days.

Boris, meanwhile has been rinsed by everyone he speaks to because of what he's said in the past. He's also given up his chickfeed job. Oh the hardship.

Now he looking like he's starting to regret deciding to play with the grown up. He's been trying - and it would seem, largely failing - at sucking up to the Americans. There's still no apology, but he has admitted that he has a list that is so long that he's lost track of what he needs to apologise for. I bet he's wishing for his playmates, Dave and George to come back.

Otherwise life carries on as normal, well this alternate new version of normal, with parliament breaking for the summer today. Don't worry the Martian landing is scheduled for a week Tuesday.

UKIP's polling seems to have dropped back post referendum, and things have gone rather quiet. Wolfe, Etheridge, Duffy and Arnott are all standing (Who? When did that happen? Yeah quite. Without Farage they disappeared). They plan to reform and make an assault on seats in the Labour heartlands of the provisional NW, Midlands and NE at the next general election. Hustings in August, new leader announced Sept 15th. Looks of thinly and not so thinly veiled racism to look forward to there then. The Daily Mail best make sure it upgrades its servers in time.

The Labour contest grinds on like a war of attrition. Stalking horse Angela fell at the first fence as Owen Smith (that's the MP not the journalist everyone including the media!) wins the dream unity candidate ticket for an apparent hiding to nothing against the steely stubbornness of Corbyn. Everyone with a pulse is starting to loose the will to live with it all.

The Lib Dems, have a Spokesman for Remain. Old Cleggy's back! Otherwise they seem to have been trying to do a deluded impression of the opposition party. Though with 8 MPs they aren't doing much better or worse than Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet atm.

The Green are having a leadership battle too. It must be very civilised - I've heard not a word about it. Lucas tried to get a vote about PR though the Commons. It failed. Again.

There also is a cross party idea to set up a new iniative of a progressive movement to champion Europe, which seems to be gaining some traction. It may also double as a support group for anyone who thinks the world has gone a bit nuts lately at this rate.

The SNP are pissed off, as they vow differently on everything and once again they feel that Trident has been imposed on them. Sturgeon had a good meeting with May though, and apparently the Union must remain and Scotland holds the key to the future. Though we don't know the key to which door that is - Braveheart or Brave New World.

The Republic of Ireland is making noises about a referendum about Irish Unity, but beyond that nothing about NI has really been on the radar. May is supposed to go visiting soon.

And the Welsh? Baaaaa who cares about the welsh? They made the mistake of voting Leave as well as the English and now have been forgotten, consigned to political irrelevance forever.

Article 50 has been pushed back officially until the New Year, with a first legal hearing on how to activate it due no sooner than the 3rd week in October. Leaving the EU legally will now be no earlier than 2019.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2685902-Westminstenders-Contines-Boris-outmaneovered-everyone-Now-War-and-Peace?pg=1 Previous Thread TEN

Trump apparently does have issues with his attention span. To a worrying degree. He doesn't 'do' detail. This is why he always sounds like a 10 year old speaking. Not a trait you want in a president.

But in the long-term, can the EU resist the reforms that the populations of many member states want to see

But what specific reforms do you think the populations want to see? It's really not clear to me, and it's also not clear that all countries would want the same reforms. It's also not clear that other countries have a domestic consensus on what reforms they would like to see - for instance in France, it's probably evenly split between nationalist demands for more sovereignty, and left-wing complaints about the neoliberal austerity enshrined in EU treatises.

as discussed earlier in the thread, I also don't think EU immigration is the huge issue that it is/was in Britain for most other countries.

Lots of good new links to read I may be some time

Going back to something Howabout said (as I try and work through all the posts):

"I think full EU membership for a country the size of Scotland confers far less influence than it does for the UK as a whole. We would be very much 1 among 27."

Therein lies the difference: I have no issue about being one amongst 28 not 27 .

I think part of the problem for both the UK and the EU is the UK's over-inflated sense of its importance, based on a long gone British Empire.

I need more information on Lisa Duffy - she appears to share her name with a Boyzone wife. So Suzanne Evans wants to rebrand UKIP - basically do an SNP?

Trumps downfall may end up big money (lack of). He's always asking for more on Twitter.

Immigration is a big issue for sure, but not in ways that can necessarily be solved by EU reforms - in France the anti-immigration agenda is focused on post-colonial north African immigrants, in Germany from what I gather it's a mix of anti-Turkish immigrants and anti-refugees sentiment

I suspect that suspending Schengen in the name of security and refugees control would be a lot more popular than restricting freedom of movement for EU citizens

Going back towards more sovereignty seems like a crowd-pleasing move in principle, but I can't really think what specific powers could realistically be moved back onto the national level, while being a big PR win for the EU?

The problem is that everyone wants reform, but no one agrees what this reform should look like - in particular there's a split between western Europe, which is more in favour of a "social" EU (not an expression I've heard in English, but it comes back all the time in France, to mean harmonization of workers rights, social security, free movement, etc), and eastern Europe which is closer to the UK position of wanting a primarily economic arrangement

Found this.

exposingukip.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/the-ukip-string-puller-mysterious-lisa.html

Doesn't sound like there'd be much rebranding going on.

A bit of background in relation to the EU banking sector issues

economia.icaew.com/news/july-2016/deutsche-bank-is-riskiest-bank-in-the-world-says-imf

blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2016/07/15/italian-banking-crisis/

The Guardian article Red linked to demonstrates how weak European level banking regulation is in comparison with the UK. This is one of the reasons the UK regulations have not gone further as they are already causing competitive disadvantage.

Yesterday the Treasury select committee called for strengthening of the enforcement arm of the FCA. I think this may be partly in response Brexit.

www.ft.com/cms/s/0/24389e6a-5260-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3c60.html#axzz4FWhJK85G

A previous post talked about possible recession in Italy due to Brexit. Now there's Quitaly: some appetite for leaving the euro:

www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2016/jul/26/italy-economy-banks-loans-crisis-europe

I think Suzanne Evans wants to try to make Ukip less 'cult of personality', and more mainstream, because she's closer to Carswell's way of thinking than she is Farage and Banks. I think if the party is going to develop beyond its current fringe appeal, it does need to move away from the personality cult model it currently operates under, however I think Banks is resisting this because it would dilute his influence.

Should also point out that whilst Banks is the unattractive face and very loud voice of Ukip donors, he is by no means the largest. They got far more from the Hargreaves Lansdown bloke whose name escapes me at the moment!

tiggy I get what you are saying exactly. There is definitely more than a touch of the Animal Farm going around at the moment.

Swedish I am not sure how campaign funding works now that Trump is the Republican nominee. I had assumed the Republican Party machine took on his campaign financing role?

Anyone know if there are any moves to unsuspend Suzanne from UKIP?

Don't know how the funding works either? But attempts now to play to American fears about Russia and go for The Leadsom "Produce your tax returns" route.

George Will raises possible Trump link to Russian oligarchs

thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/289241-george-will-raises-possible-trump-link-to-russian-oligarchs

tiggy I get what you're saying too, I guess I am just feeling defensive on behalf of the EU - I've seen it said that all of this could have been avoided if only the EU had listened to the concerns of "the people" and reformed, only imo this is a pretty unfair criticism because the UK's concerns were rather specific to the UK, and there is no consensus across the EU or even within EU countries about what exactly needs to change, people have conflicting and often contradictory views on the question.

on the question of listening to concerns rather than dismissing them, it's a fine line to walk. On the one hand you have middle-class and elite condescension, telling people that they're wrong to feel the way they feel. On the other hand you have the populist right-wing exploiting these feelings and promising people exactly what they want to hear, even if the resulting policies are demonstrably inefficient and/or unfair.

(this came out clearly during the republican convention, they were banging on about "safety" as code for "let's crack down on all those rapist immigrants and violent black men", and a journalist pointed out to well-known republican Newt Gingrich that all the statistics show that violence has actually been coming down for years. He answered that as a politician his job was not to deal with fact, but to deal with people's perceptions, their feelings. Prompted a lively debate between DH and I... )

on Trump's campaign, I don't know the technical details, but it boils down to fundraising - how many individuals, corporations, unions are willing to put money towards the campaigns.

the unions traditionally give to Democrats, corporations have been very unwilling so far to give to Trump (which he's turned into a strength, arguing that it makes him independent from special interests), as have the most prominent wealthy republican donors. It looks like he'll try to raise large numbers of small donations from "regular" people to make up for the disadvantage - this worked extremely well for Obama.

it looks like he'll try to raise large numbers of small donations from "regular" people to make up for the disadvantage

I see - hence the requests on Twitter

Are Trumps 'regular' people likely to be less well off than Obama's were?

More than a touch. Its EVERYWHERE.
The old saying is that the first casualty of war is the truth.
Which is worrying in itself.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/07/how-jeremy-corbyn-won-facebook
This article from last week about how Corbyn won facebook is great.

Jo Maugham QC @JolyonMaugham who is leading the crowd sourced challenge to a50, has today received a response about what the government intend to do. However, he unable to share this as it would be contempt of court to do this. Apparently the government did this, as they didn't want the public to know and it to be tweeted.

Jo Maugham says:
I understand Jason Coppel QC, for Government, wanted this as "anything sent to Bindmans will be tweeted." That apparently being a Bad Thing

As someone replied to this, how is this possibly in the public interest?

I think it's hugely unfortunate that these legal proceedings - which touch on all of our lives - are conducted without maximum transparency.

Apparently this is due to 'confidentially' which no one can understand when its on a matter of such national interest. It could in theory be challenged (I suspect it will be - Jo says that an interested party technically has the right to do so - say the press). He says it is effectively a gagging order.

sigh

peregrina Found this

wfpl.org/trump-picks-up-fundraising-momentum-in-kentucky/

"Clinton’s campaign received a total of 1,440 donations averaging $51 each from Kentuckians in June. She received eight donations of $1,000 or more. Trump’s campaign received 226 donations averaging about $334 each, and got 30 donations of $1,000 or more."

Presume the fewer but bigger donations increased the average?

peregrina I'm not sure, I also think that Trump will "normalise" his campaign funding now that he's the official republican candidate and pick up some big donors and super PAC support

but the bottomline is that Clinton is likely to have a lot more money than he does, because one thing he is right about is that she is the establishment candidate. She'll have it all - the big donors, the corporations, the unions.

money alone doesn't win you an election, though. (but it helps a lot)

Trump will use his fundraising campaign to his advantage. He can raise money from the people and then point to it and say how he is not the elite and not controlled by the elite. Its effectively a Corbyn leadership move.

I pondered it a week or two ago when they were saying he wasn't getting the donations to fund his campaign that he needed. Usually, this is used to fund campaign rooms and 'get the vote out' (they call up people, get them to the polling station etc in a way that we don't really do in the UK) - it added 7% to Obama's vote in some areas. It left me feeling relived.

His campaign spends so far have been somewhat bonkers - luxury accommodation for himself and 'Make America Great' hats. Thousands of them and not much else.

But then I realised that the world is different and he can motivate for free, by using social media and the tactics he has already been using. Its a frightening prospect. Plus most of the people in the Democrats who would normally run the 'get the vote out' are the students and young who are Bernie fans - and they aren't motivated and can't get excited about promoting Hillary.

People who want change will be self motivated anyway. Clinton has an uphill struggle.

She's screwed. They should have gone for Bernie and I say this as someone who doesn't much like Bernie

www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-television-idUSKCN10623E?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5797913504d30171f4691bbe&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
The tv ratings for the democrats are better than Trumps so far though.
(GOOD)