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

The UK has far worse inequality and lack of social mobility than other Western Europeans countries.
We'd do better to copy them rather than to reject them.
ust because a situation is unfair doesn't automatically mean any change is better - it could be even worse.

What I don't understand is how losing thousands of well-paid jobs helps the economy or the less well-off; there is just even less tax and wages money circulating.

I fear that competing without tariff and non-tariff protection against very low wage countries -the WTO option - would lower UK wages, worsen working conditions and rights (no more maternity leave, parental leave, anti-discrimiantion laws etc) and force businesses to move jobs abroad.

Anything that the most rightwing Tories are so keen to drag the UK into is far more likely to benefit the rich than the poor.

Looking at the FTSE 100 for Brexit effects is not very informative, because there are many foreign firms not much effected; the FTSE 250 has mostly UK firms and gives a better idea.

However, even there, what we are seeing is not really Brexit shock, but referendum shock,
i.e. some firms have frozen investment or started cutting or moving jobs but that is just in anticipation.
The full effects will be seen much later, when the UK actually leaves the EU and is affected by tariffs, non-tariff barriers, low-wage competition etc

Also, the hundreds of billions that Carney has used to support the pound make it difficult to judge how that is doing.

So, it is pretty pointless looking at indicators now and claiming Brexit isn't so bad - it hasn't actually happened yet.

I was thinking about the Corbyn leadership challenge. Does Owen Smith really expect to win, or is this a bit of a stalking horse to try and reduce JC's mandate and make him a bit more reasonable in a staged handover to a chosen successor (Starmer/ Nandy?) later? Or is this really genuine?

But possibly it is paving the way to the announcement of borrowing and investing being announced in the Autumn statement to help longer term recovery (which would obviously fly in the face of all their promises and targets)

That's my hope.

Hello all I am back....can I swear? A lot!

Effing frecking Momentum are pissing me off - I can't find anyone within the echelons of the LP who doesn't seem to be a member that I can complain to about the intimidation they displayed at my CLP and the data I believe they have received through a breach

Can anyone help? They are so entrenched in the LP that everyone I try to complain to is a member of momentum - I have complained that there is a data breach and that momentum is using LP member data to be told by the Regional LP there is nothing anyone can do. Rubbish. Told by the Regional LP that they can not do anything about meetings in which people do not feel safe. Rubbish. They have also said they can do nothing about a company taking over the local grass roots of the party?

When I asked who I can complain to higher up they have said google the NEC

Ideas very welcome

PS can I also say that Trump is a fascist wanker....there it's all out now

I despise Corbyn, not because of the media, but because I observed him on and off since he became an MP in 1983 and I was absolutely disgusted with what he was doing.

Cosying up to Sinn Fein during the Troubles - supporting them, praising the IRA as heroes.
The fact that Gerry Adams had to get Labour to shut him up during the peace talks is outrageous - JC wanted the IRA to continue fighting and he tried to derail the Peace Process.

How on earth can he be Labour's candidate for PM when he wanted terrorists to continue murdering British people ?
The press don't have to lie about him - the truth is totally damning.

He turns a blind eye to his Momentum friends bullying people, especially women, just like he tolerated his terrorist friends murdering people.

McGinn said he went public because he could “no longer tolerate the hypocrisy of him talking about a kinder, gentler politics” on Newsnight last night.

"Jeremy does not know my father so I can only presume that because of the much-publicised fact that my father was a Sinn Féin councillor, Jeremy felt that they would share a political affinity and was proposing to use that to ask my father to apply pressure on me.
Thankfully, others dissuaded Jeremy from taking this course of action"

That is an example of JC's natural bullying instincts, so no wonder some of his supporters are behaving badly.
Are all those other MPs and councillors just inventing those threats of murder, rape, harming their children ?

In contrast, Michael Foot had very radical socialist policies that would have helped the poor far more than some terrorist groupie ever could.

Michale was genuinely patriotic, a marvellous orator, historian, author, a totally briiliant Renaissance man.
He wanted Fortress Britain to protect Uk jobs - I didn't agree with that strategy, but leaving the EEC back in 1983 would at least have been quite doable. His motives were absolutely never xenophobic.

He was a real leader, so I get irritated when JC is said to be "another Foot" - he isn't even a grubby toenail scraping !

On a lighter note this is Rod Liddle's take on the JC / OS contest

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/smarmy-owen-smith-answer-labours-asking-wrong-question/

Owen Smith:
"The problem is under his leadership there has been a culture of bullying.
There has been intolerance and abuse in the Labour party, that we have never seen before.
Women in Labour have found themselves subject to awful awful misogynistic abuse,
some of our Jewish MPs have been subjected to antisemitic abuse,
some of our Asian MPs have been subjected to abuse"

"Jeremy, of course, always says that he does not condone it, but somehow under his leadership we can’t deny the facts that
this wasn’t something we saw in the Labour party before Jeremy Corbyn became leader
and it’s now become common place in the Labour party.
So something has gone badly wrong under his watch"

I don't agree about Michael Foot. I went to see him at a hustings in 1992 and he went on and on about the 1945 landslide. I remarked to the friend I was with that my children would be able to vote in the '97 election and they no more want to hear what happened almost 50 years ago, than I would have wanted to hear about the 1920s when I first cast my vote. IMO he was a decent politician but not a leader. It is the greatest pity that John Smith died when he did, because he would have done the job well.

Following on from the tuition fees discussion yesterday and in the context of the Alice in Wonderland World of Austerity economics this is an interesting article explaining how raising University fees does not raise money. (My kids are in Scotland and thinking about University. If they take out a maintenance loan and earn an average graduate salary they will actually repay more in student loans than their English counterparts despite having no Fees to pay - completely contrary to the MN misinformed orthodoxy)

www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/mar/21/explained
-triple-tuition-fees-no-extra-cash

(I am having trouble finding the academic paper citing EU membership as one of the reasons for fees because my usual scholarly googling has been somewhat corrupted by this thread )

Sorry. Here is the link done properly

www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/mar/21/explained-triple-tuition-fees-no-extra-cash

Exactly! Nothing is being done at any level. 'Jokes' about disabled and sexuality - on labour party CLP pages FFS. The labour party members that clearly think and act in this way.

I am seriously thinking for the first time ever of switching parties partly because of the level of disgust I have for some of the LP members- I never thought I would say that. Ever. They should be honest to the electorate - UKIP voters would swarm to them

Welcome back, ShowMe.

Sorry, I can't help with that - but it's good to see you again.

Yes. I am wondering if it is time to start calling Trump a fascist. My dh gets very picky about the use of the term.. I think he's one of those who only really permits the use of the term to the (safely dead) historical instances, or their very precise modern re-enactments (those ardently kitting themselves out as modern followers of Hitler and Mussolini) but I am wondering if it is time to look rather more firmly at what is being mobilised at the heart of our politics right now.

Financial TimesVerified account ‏@FT 2h2 hours ago
Nigel Farage plans a European tour to encourage 'other independence movements'
on.ft.com/29Omh1H

Wonder who they'll be?

Just a thought - is the US election another reason why TM is delaying Article 50? Come their election she will know whether trade deals with the US are more or less likely.

I would think she's waiting for all elections and hoping the damn thing will go away

He's certainly quacking like a fascist

I thinking calling all Mexicans rapists and the fact he is a white supremacist makes it so

So on the one hand in the US there's a Right wing demagogue delivering a message with fascist overtones with a delivery coming out of the 1930s and on the other in the UK there's a shadowy organisation in the socialist party declaring anyone stepping out of line a traitor who should be purged or worse.

It's at times like this I'm glad I've always been interested in history.

wrt student fees: England made bad choices.
Often, foreigners are used as an excuse to take something away, so the government avoids some blame

Some EEA countries chose to abolishe fees and UK students can still take advantage of these
e.g. Germany did so and has many English language courses available for international students.
They are regarded as a benefit to the country, instead of the typical English attitude that foreigners are taking something that belongs to the natives.

Trump is a disgusting racist who deliberately appeals to the worst instincts
He helped embolden racists in other Western countries to openly insult minorities.
Patrolling the streets in Muslim neighbourhoods sounds fascist and oppressive unless there are specific reasons to think they are threats.

Most UKIP aren't fascist, but Farage is - he just learned to cover up a bit after Dulwich college:
His English teacher Chloe Deakin pleaded with the head not to appoint Farage as a prefect, alleging that he was "a racist" and held "neo-fascist views".

http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/after-his-nazi-propaganda-poster-people-are-resharing-the-shocking-letter-where-one-of-nigel-farages-teachers-calls-him-a-fascist--Zkb587Ow4b

Not just fascist though, but specifically Nazi - his infamous poster was a chilling throwback: