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

Its been pointed out that the increase in the Lib Dem's share of the vote in Newport (+11%) based on the council by election earlier tonight if the same was repeated at the next GE would make the seat a marginal. Labour have held the seat since 1945. I don't think this would happen as people do vote differently for locals to GE but its an observation that should make people take notice.

Newlyn & Goonhavern result:
LDEM: 24.4% (+24.4)
CON: 23.1% (-23.0)
IND: 16.1% (+16.1)
MK: 15.9% (-28.1)
LAB: 7.6% (-2.2)
IND: 7.4%
IND: 5.3%
Lib Dem gain - obviously they didn't stand a candidate previously but that's a good result for them all the same.

I would take it as a given that the Lib/Dem vote will go back close to its 2010 levels at the next GE. However this would hurt the Conservatives more than Labour. (They didn't win by beating Labour last time. They beat the Lib/Dems and contained UKIP -why the referendum was offered and why there were all the references to the SNP pulling EM's strings - why they were quite happy to let the Lib/Dems take credit for their "success" in coalition).

This is one of the reasons I think there is no point in Labour chasing votes on the Right or doing anything other than accepting Brexit.

I await David Lammy congratulating JC and DA for a job well done in the Harringay result.

I agree it is somewhat fanciful to project the Newport result onto a future GE.

The threat to the Lib/Dems in Carlshalton comes from the Conservatives. A lot of people are very very fed up with the Southern trains dispute.

This is one of the reasons I think there is no point in Labour chasing votes on the Right or doing anything other than accepting Brexit.

No, Labour needs to concentrate on keeping votes which might defect to UKIP now that they can see how vulnerable they are.

Lib Dems in the South and West need to concentrate, as before, on mopping up the moderate Tory vote.

Lots of interesting stuff coming out of the Holyrood Brexit Evidence sessions

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-36907278

Farmers and Fishermen and Food and Drink Industry (including whisky) sounding fairly bullish.

Financial sector looking at opportunities and possibilities for differential Brexit for Scotland.

Impact of Brexit on Scottish financial settlement being considered.

Small business sector raising concerns about market access and ability to import skilled workers.

What Holyrood should be talking about is the Supreme Court ruling that the data-sharing and 'wellbeing indicators' in the compulsory Named Person legislation have just been judged to be in Contravention of Article 8 of the Human Rights Act.

(sorry, I realise it's a tenuous link to Brexit, but the ECHR link is important as if the SC had not ruled against NP then the No2NP campaign would have taken it to the ECHR next)

I don't read/look at the Express so have no idea how prominent this is but

www.express.co.uk/news/clarifications-corrections/693618/Correction-amazing-things-we-get-back-if-we-leave-EU

The Express - well, well, caught out lying! Deleting the page and not allowing comments! That just sums them up. They forget though, that now with the power of the Internet people save and/or retrieve deleted pages, so it's not quite so easy to pretend that it never happened.

Quite. I suspect Express readers will think it's the EU's fault that they've had to retract.

My mind is boggling as to what wonderful things that the EU stopped us being able to do with jam, water and swedes

BUSY BUSY today

Brexit means Brexit
www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/brexit-theresa-may-to-bypass-european-commission-and-appeal-directly-to-eu-leaders-in-attempt-to-secure-better-deal/ar-BBuZKl3?ocid=spartandhp
May trying to bypass Juncker's lot.

Lionel Barber ‏@lionelbarber
A shadow over Liam Fox's trade role -watch this space #Brexit

Liam Fox, looks like he has a lot of sitting on his hands doing nothing ahead of him. Sounds like there is potential trouble brewing too.

Newspaper quote from article attached to above tweet:
Some of Dr Fox’s colleagues thought the trade department, which is hiring negotiators from the private sector to build up the country’s minimal expertise, would lead talk on an EU free-trade agreement.

But the prime minister’s office insists that the trade department’s remit only covers trade deals across the globe, not the detail of any new arrangement with the EU.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/29/brexit-negotiations-michel-barnier?CMP=twt_gu
Worried about Darth EU Brexit Barnier? Its fineeeeee and all under control, insists Conservative MEP Syed Kamall.

www.buzzfeed.com/patricksmith/councils-call-on-government-to-secure-under-threat-eu-funds?bftwuk&utm_term=.ur04MbG8y#.ik4jQya1r
Councils are getting even more nervous

Christian May @ChristianJMay
Well look at that. Our 'embarrassing idiot of a Foreign Sec' is speaking fluent French in his Paris press conference.
Adam Bienkov ‏@AdamBienkov
Only in Britain are people impressed by the sight of one of their own politicians speaking a foreign language
Sums up our English inward naval gazing really doesn't it?

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/racism-brexit-immigration-eu-referendum-post-referendum-boston-least-integrated-town-a7150541.html
Post Brexit Racism in Boston

Esther Webber @estwebber
@DavidAllenGreen the Labour spox also said in that debate "the penny had dropped" for farmers since the vote
hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2016-07-21/debates/16072156000636/FarmingImpactOfBrexit#contribution-16072156000337
House of Lords Debate on the Farming Impact of Brexit from 21 July 2016
Some cracking concerns in there.

Other Government Related stuff
The FT are reporting the following this morning:
Real reason for Hinkley delay? May's key aide fears Chinese could "shut down Britain’s energy production at will”.
Is that Brexit related or not? I think that there is a question mark over that, as we are about to invite a lot of people here to invest in the country from abroad and suddenly we get cold feet over the idea of the Chinese having such a huge stake in the UK as we somehow don’t trust them as much as we should? Hmmm….

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/get-ready-for-the-great-brexit-lobbying-boom-sg8gxcd9b?shareToken=e3d129911405d8a2fb04b0ae1dc3f8e2
Indeed the Times have a story, saying to ‘get ready for the Great Brexit Lobbying Boom, and the political ramifications that might have: with the government almost held hostage by the situation and how that might not necessarily be a good thing for the country.

I’m paywalled out, but I think there is enough there to give a flavour and raise a question even if we can’t read it all as Jo Maugham points out with an extract:
Theory suggest that large firms are more likely to engage in lobbying behaviour and have better bargaining positions against their host governments than smaller entities. Conditional on jurisdiction size, public policy choices are thus predicted to depend on the shape of a jurisdiction’s firm size distribution, with more business-friendly policies being enacted if economic activity is concentrated in a small number of entities. We empirically assess this prediction studying local business tax choices of German municipalities. Exploiting rich and quasi-experimental variation in localities’ firm size structures, we find evidence for an inverse relationship between the concentration of economic activity and communities’ business tax choices. The effect is statistically significant and quantitatively relevant, suggesting that the rising importance of large businesses may trigger shifts towards a more business-friendly design of (tax) policies.

Jo Maugham QC ‏@JolyonMaugham

Or, Government is captive. In unconnected news, under the Tories we have the lowest corporation tax rate in the G20.

So its bye bye EU overlords, hello big business overlords. Look how well lobbying is working out in the US. Taking back control and sovereignty my arse.

Labour
www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/07/jeremy-corbyn-and-his-opponents-are-now-locked-permanent-struggle
The New Statesmen doesn’t think Labour will split now

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/29/corbynistas-demonised-as-thugs-are-like-the-striking-miners-who/
Corbynistas are demonised like the Striking Miners were (A timely reference to Orgreave and by extension Hillsborough) says Richard Burgon MP

Business News
brexitrecord.herokuapp.com/
Website carrying an updating list of bad economic news headlines post Brexit. Something to truly bring joy to your Friday morning.

Danny Blanchflower ‏@D_Blanchflower
huge drop in UK Econ sentiment index from 107 to 102.6 every one of the 5 components collapsed: consumer, building, retail, industry & services

www.itv.com/news/2016-07-29/barclays-warns-of-brexit-impact-as-profits-dive-21-to-2-06bn/
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/barclays-pays-a-heavy-price-to-become-the-brexit-bank-a7161806.html
Barclays of the FUKD. The Brexit Bank.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/may-faces-battle-to-keep-banking-sector-in-london-5rnntd0sw?shareToken=372c789bc2804308b0fc1d4713b24dd2
Another Paywall problem but the Times admitting that May faces battle to keep banking in London.
If the Times are reporting this, then we should be worried.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36912676
Brexit knocks manufacturers confidence

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/260fc618-54fa-11e6-917c-b7a493d07de7
Ford set to raise prices in the UK.
Another paywall, another selected quote from our friend Jo Maugham QC ‏@JolyonMaugham:
There are also fears over the future of Ford’s manufacturing operations in the UK. While it has already stopped making cars in Britain, it builds some vehicle parts here, including engines.

Ford’s Bridgend and Dagenham plants are big employers producing engines for export across the EU to factories where its vehicles are assembled.

Mr Shanks did not offer any guarantee over the future of these operations, which employ several thousand, an said “everything is going to be on the table in Europe”.

UKIP
[[http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nigel-farage-panic-steven-woolfe_uk_579afe6be4b07cb01dcf57df?birw51iembrqw7b9
An Ukip official has claimed Nigel Farage asked him to stand as party leader because of “panic” that frontrunner Steven Woolfe could be ineligible, the Huff Post UK can reveal.

In a message sent on Wednesday evening – and seen by Huff Post UK this morning - Ukip Deputy Treasurer Peter Jewell said “Nigel and others” have asked him to throw his hat into the ring in order to “hold the fort for a while”.

Hold the fort?! FFS. Farage already planning his return then, whilst he takes a holiday in Australia.

Focus Groups and Polls
lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/07/post-brexit-britain-and-the-new-regime-the-voters-react/#more-14828
Pollster Lord Ashcroft’s latest focus groups. Always worth a read.
I note that he suggests that Leaver still think that immigration is more important than economy.

labourlist.org/2016/07/working-people-are-losing-their-voice-its-time-to-bring-democratic-reform-back-into-the-labour-mainstream/
Labour also have a focus group today, about how working people are losing their voice.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/07/youre-wrong-about-leave-voters-four-surprising-facts-about-52-cent
And the New Statement has an article about what Leave voters think. They include the fact that Leave voters have to wait longer for the bus.

Other Voices
www.independent.co.uk/news/people/stephen-hawking-warns-human-race-will-perish-if-we-do-not-change-attitudes-towards-money-we-had-over-a7161631.html
Stephen Hawking on our attitude to money. We need to learn to share.

International
www.rt.com/news/353753-turkey-protest-incirlik-base/
Russia Today are reporting about protests outside Nato’s Incirlik base. I can’t find anyone else carrying the story at the moment. This comes a day after Turkish newspaper The Daily Sabah reported that ‘Incirlik airbase was the “think tank” of plotters in Turkey’.

Remember of course North Korea said yesterday that the USA had declared war on them and two more police officers have just been shot in San Diego (one of them has died and one is in surgery in hospital). And I have managed to get through all that without mentioning Farts.

If you are still with us after that lot, and having decided to just hang yourself, Buzzfeed have a fun quiz for you today about ‘What else could go wrong in 2016?’. www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/rise-of-the-woozles?bftwuk&utm_term=.jjEozXeK8#.dkJ51Vae6
The only trouble is, I wonder if some of these might come true!

Oh and Mrs Mangel from Neighbours has died today.

Enjoy your weekend.

The UK remains bound by the ECHR regardless of EU membership.
All European countries are, including Russia, but excluding iirc the Ukraine.

Russia ignores ECHR rulings that go against it, but they are an exception: a military / nuclear superpower; also the judges don't fancy Putin's polonium with their next sushi

Sorry, screwed up part of that post:

UKIP
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nigel-farage-panic-steven-woolfe_uk_579afe6be4b07cb01dcf57df?birw51iembrqw7b9

An Ukip official has claimed Nigel Farage asked him to stand as party leader because of “panic” that frontrunner Steven Woolfe could be ineligible, the Huff Post UK can reveal.

In a message sent on Wednesday evening – and seen by Huff Post UK this morning - Ukip Deputy Treasurer Peter Jewell said “Nigel and others” have asked him to throw his hat into the ring in order to “hold the fort for a while”.

Hold the fort?! FFS. Farage already planning his return then, whilst he takes a holiday in Australia.

Focus Groups and Polls
lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/07/post-brexit-britain-and-the-new-regime-the-voters-react/#more-14828
Pollster Lord Ashcroft’s latest focus groups. Always worth a read.
I note that he suggests that Leaver still think that immigration is more important than economy.

and the Mrs Mangel link
Mrs Mangel from Neighbours

I'm puzzled why all the political parties should wish to fight for the votes of the 52% and ignore the 48%.

Same as for the type of Brexit:
Many seem to feel it is mandatory to choose the hard Brexit wanted by a majority of the 52%, not a majority of the whole general public

65% of Labour supporters voted Remain (and the overall referendum result was a very narrow one)
So suddenly those 65% are unimportant and it's all about pleasing the 35% ?

The Labour Party has been in favour of the EU since Michael Foot quit, so they need to at least wait until the Party Conference to overturn that policy and decide on what type of Brexit they should push for.

Labour has always been in favour of immigration and multiculturalism, so a soft EEA Brexit would avoid a 180 degree turn on that basic principle.

Also, a hard WTO Brexit would be far more free market dominated than the EU: a race to the bottom for workers rights & pay.
All that pesky EEA red tape that some businesses want to get rid of includes:
maternity rights, anti-discrimiantion law, safe working conditions, maximum hrs, health & safety standards, environmental standards ....
It also specifies the standards for goods if the UK wants to continue exporting to any EEA country.

Putin wants an unstable Europe & UK outside the EEA, so Seamus Milne & the PutinBots do too.
(Putin strangely manages to have the support of both hard left AND hard right simultaneously on some issues )

However, he and his PutinBots shouldn't be allowed to drive Labour policy on Brexit

Wow Red you have been busy - it's going to take me ages to catch up with that lot.

I'm puzzled why all the political parties should wish to fight for the votes of the 52% and ignore the 48%.

Exactly how I feel. We are just going to get a kick in the teeth are we - all 16 million of us?

Well look at that. Our 'embarrassing idiot of a Foreign Sec' is speaking fluent French in his Paris press conference.

Oh look, Boris still thinking he can charm everyone into forgetting what a shallow buffoon he is. At least he's a trier.

Most Remainers probably also want restrictions on immigration, but they voted Remain because they prioritised staying in the single market and retaining the 10% of the GDP that the City of London provides.

So far, still no sign that the UK will really be allowed to have its cake and eat it, when no other EEA country has been allowed this.

The proposed 7-year moratorium - which is only the vaguest rumour - is just EEA with the immigration can kicked down the road
i.e. still looks like a choice of Free Movement & Free Trade vs restricting immigration & WTO, basically the referendum choice

Do his many and varied lies somehow become irrelevant if he switches language?

For English speaking countries he might have to adopt a funny accent.

Interesting: another example of TM being hardnosed wrt negotiations, or just Brexit belt-tightening ?

www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/28/hinkley-point-c-to-go-ahead-after-edf-board-
approves-project

Hinkley Point was expected to get UK gov approval over £30 billion subsidy deal tomorrow, for EDF to build the UK's first nuclear power station in a generation - Sizewell B came on line in 1995
(EDF because the UK has lost all relevant expertise during that long gap)
Now this decision is to be reviewed, hence delayed until at least September.

Remember, EDF is owned by the French State - no 30 billion subsidy for them unless they play nice ?

oops
www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/28/hinkley-point-c-to-go-ahead-after-edf-board-approves-project

it's also looking like some EU countries are willing to cut the UK some slack on immigration, in exchange for the head of the City.

that's a choice May will have to make.

In a way the language-switching infuriates me even more, because that's what Boris has been coasting on for years - the cultural veneer provided to him by his privileged background and private education. He's all show and no substance.