Westministenders Continues. The one where are being grateful for having a Boris rather than a Trump and UKIP show Labour how it’s done.

[RedToothBrush]

THE BREXIT FALLOUT CONTINUES - THREAD TWELVE

The calm of the eye of the storm is upon us. The signs are there that more trouble is ahead. What now for Brexit, the blank cheque for our future?

May’s honeymoon can only last the Summer, until she has to do some proper graft. Her Cabinet have all gone on holiday and to swat up on their new specialised subject, and by god have they got some homework to do.

Well, all of them apart from Liam Fox, who has bugger all to do for some time.

Johnson needs to… well we all know what Boris needs to do. Bend over and take it like a good boy.

Davies needs to learn the entire structure and workings of the EU and its variations of trade agreements and relationships with other nations. Juncker has the FUKD in his little black book of people who have crossed him (yes, he actually has one of these) and has put Brit Hating Barnier in charge of the EU Brexit team. Davies must somehow hold his own against this experienced EU hardnut. In French. Oh and find a permanent office.

What do the others need to learn? Hammond - how to perform a bloody miracle. Patel - it is illegal to use foreign aid as a leverage for trade deals. Leadsom – er everything? Rudd – how to do bigger assault on liberty and human rights than her mentor. Fallon – how we will afford to defend ourselves with pitch forks, especially if we can’t use Trident for some reason and it becomes necessary. Our enemy; Russia? North Korea? Turkey? Isis? Na. Trump if he wins.

Brexit is now officially in the hands Whitehall’s unbelievers. Those overstretched officials who are already saying there is a gap in their capacity to deliver what Parliament wants without additional the burden of Brexit. These discredited experts are left wondering if their challenge is, in reality, Mission Impossible, and this is made worse by the pressure that just about every senior Brexiteer seems to say is ‘easy’ despite all the mounting evidence to the contrary. Which is cold comfort to everyone who voted – Remain or Leave alike.

We still don’t even know what Brexit is. It is still something which has no coherent ideology and no clear set of prescriptions for what ailes us as a society. It is a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposes. Whatever the problem, Brexit can fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, Brexit can vanquish it, and it is unnecessary for Brexiteers to explain how.

May’s plan? Some say that she is the Dear Leader, some say she is an evil genius with Larry the Cat on her lap waiting for the Brexiteer Boys to fuck it up so we can Remain, some say she is blessed by the Ghost of Thatcher but we know her as The PM. –Sorry I’ve been itching to make the May/Hammond Top Gear gag for several weeks— The truth is, we just don't know yet.

Plus anything Brexit related about the Labour and UKIP leadership and the rest of the world thrown in to boot.

This is the quest for the answers that everyone wants and trying to keep an eye on those politicians and accountability (both here and abroad in the era of post-fact politics in the trail of Brexit). There maybe no single ‘truth’ but there sure as hell is a lot of bullshit to wade through. Get your wellies out, and plough on through with us.

No experience necessary. Sense of humour required.

-------------------------

Brexit Fall Out Timetable
Labour Hustings Nottinghamshire: Wednesday 17th August
Labour Hustings Birmingham: Thursday 18th August.
Labour Hustings Glasgow: Thursday 25th August.
Labour Hustings London: Thursday 1st September
UKIP Leadership Result: 15th September
Labour Leadership Result: Saturday 24th September
The Department for Exiting the European Union first question sessions in Parliament: Thursday 20th October
High Court hearing on a50: due 'no earlier than the third week in October'
US Presidential Election: 8th November
French Presidential Election 1st Round: 23 April 2017
French Presidential Election 2nd Round: 7th May 2017
German Federal Election: Between 27 August and 22 October 2017

Last thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2690632-Westminstenders-Continues-Boris-is-having-a-bad-week-Corbyn-resists-Its-gonna-be-a-long-summer?pg=1

There are a couple of articles in the Spectator today about how the leave campaign won the war(!) but the remainders have been much quicker to set the agenda for the peace and it looks like the leave campaign's clear demands(!) will be diluted.

Perhaps if the plan didn't involve unicorns, however lovely they are, people would have more confidence in embracing whatever the leave campaigns version if Brexit now is.

Also DD is being thwarted by the civil servants who are refusing to join his department and their managers are not forcing them.

You make some good points re referenda tiggytape.

With regards to your last paragraph: the SNP at least produced an extensive document which, as you say, could be and was picked over. The Leave campaign did not, and hence you got the leaders of the campaign immediately reneging on what the voters thought they had promised. Leaving us with the mess now, because no one really knows what Leave want.

Very good points tiggy and I have to admit my post was not entirely serious. I actually think indyref1 gave the government confidence they shouldn't have had.

Michael Crick ‏@MichaelLCrick
Farage aide George Cottrell pleads not guilty in Arizona court to money-laundering, blackmail & other charges. Trial set for Tues 4 October

Flipping heck, is there anywhere in the world that UKIP cronies are not facing charges for dodgy shit?

Matthew Price ‏@BBCMatthewPrice
Gibraltar Chief Minister tells @BBCr4today a "hard exit" from EU would pose "existential threat" to the economy.
Er yes, lets all forget about Gibraltar. Perhaps we can just flog it to Spain.

George Magnus ‏@georgemagnus1
George Magnus Retweeted TradeWinds
Paywalled but not just US protectionism. Little bird tells me more in Sunday Times abt this. Imp for Brexit Britain

AP Moller-Maersk warns of US protectionism: Chief financial officer of Danish giant says a potential shift in US policy which threatens international trade.

The US going all protectionist would mean we were 'back of the queue' that was going nowhere. And would make us a target for exports as the US market disappeared (not terribly good for our trade deficient) and would make it harder for us to get favourable deals on our terms with the likes of China.

Think we need to keep an eye on how this develops. I think regardless of whether we get Trump or Clinton there is a real danger of this happening now.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/20/brexit-eu-referendum-economy-project-fear
Debunking project fear
Fair enough. Then the last paragraph reads:
When I voted for Brexit on 23 June, I did so for three reasons: because the European Union is a failed project; because Europe is moving in an increasingly free-market direction; and because I wanted to shake up the status quo. It would take an extremely deep and prolonged recession to make me regret my choice. That prospect seems even more remote than it did eight weeks ago.
I can't see the way May is going as not being increasingly free-market. More so than the EU.

www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-attacks-germany-afd-idUSKCN10V0A5?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=57b8395d04d30103400310c7&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
Far right in Germany speak in favour of arming themselves in order to defend themselves.

This will not end well, will it?

And finally, the wisdom and great intellect of Mrs Leadsom on display here.

Andrea Leadsom MP ‏@andrealeadsom
Over a quarter of our agricultural workforce is female. A positive stat for a key industry across the whole UK
#notjustforboys

Errrrr, ok. Can anyone expand on this one for me? I'd have thought the number was simply due to farming mainly being family businesses relying on the cheap labour of family members rather than any kind of great statement about equality...

A crowd funded legal challenge to invoking A50 gains momentum:

www.bindmans.com/news/crowd-funded-legal-challenge-to-use-of-article-50-in-a-democratic-vacuum-ga

This is about the citizenship rights we have as a result of Acts of Parliament passed to give effect to EU laws: they can't be taken away unless those Acts are repealed.

Brexit gets ever more complex.

To promise anything at all about an independence question is necessarily fanciful at best because the winner doesn't get to call the shots after the vote is over.

You mean like how Leave doesn't get to call the shots. (Damn pesky Remain not rolling over and accepting it)
Or even the UK doesn't get to call the shots. (Damn the pesky EU for waiting to protect their own interests)

Hester, that one sounds suspiciously very much like there could be not much room for bargaining over free movement of people - without revoking our own rights to it first.

Quelle surprise.

Re the Scottish Indyref and the use of the £, to be fair on the Scottish Government, they said that was their preferred option as (which is relevant to the Brexit debate) that was the best thing both for Scotland and rUK. They actually had, iirc, 3 other options, of varying degrees of preference.

And given that Scotland co-owns the Bank of England (if the fact that we are a "Union" is to be believed ), it wasn't an unreasonable preference. And I listened to Mark Carney's entire press conference (including the Q&A) and he didn't say it wasn't possible (as was presented on the MSM): he said that, as with all currency unions, it involves a degree of giving up sovereignty and requires fiscal alignment.

There would be nothing stopping Scotland just using the pound - just as there are countries who choose to use the dollar, despite not being part of the USA.

I'm not getting much reassurance from that Larry Elliott article sadly. He writes as though we've left already and seen the worst, when we've not only not left but still have no idea what leaving might look like.

He mentions investment being weak, but not that 75% of foreign investors say they are here largely because it gives them access to the single market (according to an ft poll some months back). What happens then if we lose that?

And, seemingly like all leavers, he has blind faith that his personal unicorn (the Lexit in his case) will win the day when it finally emerges which of the kaleidoscopic array of Brexit outcomes will come to pass, despite all indications to the contrary.

Nor does he talk about how bidding for scientific funding has already been compromised.

This debate about the Scottish Referendum is very interesting. It's just illustrating that even when it has been given much thought, details have been considered and costings have been made, that there are still issues which would be difficult to resolve.

Now the UK wide Brexit referendum - well, that's all supposed to be a piece of cake, isn't it? Why don't we just get on with it?

Here's one to get your chops around.

I'm reading up stuff on acquired rights:

From what I'm understanding, a case has set a prescient in which EU law and the EU treaties are distinct from many other international treaties in the extent to which they give individuals rights, ‘which become part of their legal heritage’.

There is a question of whether we would retain these rights or not under an area of law called ‘acquired rights’ when the laws that these rights were obtained from are removed somehow (eg through grant of independence, secession or exit from the EU) as they are recognised rights and therefore can not be removed without an act of parliament.

An example is the rights of other EU citizens living and working in the UK without the need for a residence or work permit or rights to health care for UK citizens living abroad.

In the case of EU citizens living and working here, if it was established that they had an acquired right to live and work here - without an permit or work visa - then there might be a problem over turning this and putting that act of parliament into place.

This then leads on to what happens if you then want to control immigration and who has the right to live and work here if they are an EU citizen.

If resident EU citizens have a legal right to not need a visa or permit, how do you prevent EU citizens who have not obtained that acquired right from working or living here? The management, policing and enforcing of immigration of EU citizens then starts to become difficult (and expensive) in the short term at the very least.

Even if you introduced a new law that made EU residents apply for indefinite leave to remain it would take 14 years to complete all the applications with the current infrastructure and application process.

If you discriminate against EU citizens for any reason in that time, then there is a real danger that you could face a law suit for not upholding their legal acquired right, even if their application had not been fully processed.

It does strike me that any EU national wanting to come and live and work here, could quite easily, exploit the huge holes in this mess for quite a few years making any attempt to control free movement of people pretty farcical for about a decade.

And that's not taking the issue of NI and its legal rights for free movement of people enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement into account. The First Minister and Deputy have already issued that letter expressing their concerns over how the border arrangements 'must not be used as a catalyst for illegal activity or compromise in any way the arrangements relating to criminal justice and tackling organised crime'.

As people have previously said about NI how do you square the circle? And its made even more complicated by this issue and its practicalities.

The idea that we can stop free movement of people from the EU in any time frame that will be acceptable to the likes of Farage and isn't going to be open to abuse AND is going to square with the demands of the EU over trade barriers and protect the rights of British citizens living in the EU???

I'm going cross eyed over the idea that its actually achievable even with the political will to try and do so.

Yet this is a pillar of May's goals for Brexit?

Even with my best 'believe' hat on, I'm thinking 'How? Just HOW?' when faced with the obstacles.

If that's really the case, then what's the point in end of even thinking or considering sacrificing the Single Market? It makes no sense whatsoever. We might as well 'make the compromise' on the free movement of people due to the problem of practicalities and keep the economic privilege.

I'm beginning to really come to that David Allen Green conclusion that EU membership 'may prove to be an unmoveable object' even if that shafts us and we don't like it.

The ONLY alternative I can think of here is another EU treaty which helps us. Now I'm thinking here that one of the EU principles is that they have to recognise democratic decisions made by sovereign nations. In which case the pressure on the EU to reform to allow the UK major concessions might actually be enshrined in its own framework. Its a bit of a long shot I admit, but if its shown that we no longer have the ability to recognise and act upon our own sovereignty due to the EU, we are back in the land of Lala and that long forgotten Cummingseque strategy, that was mentioned as The Plan in blog mentioned way back in thread 1, to force the EU to change.

Like I say. I'm going cross eyed and I'd like to extend my best wishes and good luck to David Davies and his 32 senior staff.

I don't know whether anyone has posted a link to this legal blog on these threads. In case not: ukconstitutionallaw.org/2016/05/16/sionaidh-douglas-scott-what-happens-to-acquired-rights-in-the-event-of-a-brexit/

The conclusion is less than optimistic about what rights would be protected outside a Withdrawal Agreement that specifically included rights to live and work in other countries.

"At present, we cannot know what might be negotiated in a Withdrawal Agreement, nor what the UK Government’s withdrawal strategy might be, nor indeed if the EU would be a hard bargainer, leading to negative economic effects for the UK. What should be clear is that, absent a Withdrawal Agreement which gives give clear protection of acquired rights, existing national, EU and international law does not offer a great deal of protection. So the content of the Withdrawal Agreement would be crucial...."

Patty that's one of the things I've been reading.

The fact its not clear what rights would be is sufficient for it to be something that we need to be very focused on establishing.

I've also been reading about how inevitable it will be to have these legal rights challenged in law (as they have implications to many people's daily lives) otherwise.

Its simply not something you can fudge or make an assumption about as it will be tested. Of course to do this requires an enormous amount of work and the courts aren't necessarily going to give you the response you want to hear and suits your wider political agenda.

Tiggytape - I actually agree that shadowing long term is not a good idea but short term might be the way to establish a Scottish £ (poond? ) - in the same way that, for example that the Irish punt shadowed the pound before breaking parity. Iirc that was one of the options discussed in the White Paper.

Continuing the divorce analogy: while not accepting everything the petitioning party wants, the courts don't usually allow one side to keep everything just because they don't want the divorce to happen. Especially after a long Union marriage, there is a negotiation to ensure a fair division of the assets.

But going back to the Brexit Referendum - at least these things were discussed. Debating positions were established.

.....Unlike the ephemeral and ever-shifting land of unicorns and everlasting cake described by the Leave Campaign.

Post-Referendum depression caught me and I've not been on the thread(s) for a while.
Nipping back to place-mark and add the news that tomorrow's Observer carries a story on Sadiq Khan endorsing Smith.
My twitter timeline is alive with denunciations of Khan as a Blarite (utterly laughable- or should be if it weren't so depressing) and claims that Khzn won in London because of Corbyn-effect (not true in my experience). It's a bit depressing. I'm hating seeing the attack on Khan.

I wonder if Sadiq Khan has broken his silence on the 'Corbyn question' because of the possibility of a Labour split if/when Corbyn wins the upcoming leadership vote.
I'm utterly depressed again.

I wonder if Sadiq Khan has broken his silence on the 'Corbyn question' because of the possibility of a Labour split if/when Corbyn wins the upcoming leadership vote.
I'm utterly depressed again.

According to Michael Crick, it's because the ballot papers go out on Monday. Although Khan did say last year that he wouldn't vote for Corbyn, or support him, despite being one of the MPs who nominated him.

I realise this is pre-the vote. I'm wondering why he's been so outspoken at all. I worry he's finally weighed in (after some quite noticeable avoidance/diplomacy - I think we all know he's no Corbynista but he's gone to some lengths to keep out of the fray) because a post-Corbyn victory split is firming up.
I've been (slightly desperately) hoping a sit will be avoided but this has genuinely worried me.

Here's where I stumble a bit. I do wonder if she's more right-wing economically than she likes to let on (she was certainly quite hardline in the Home Office) and is feeling OK, or even excited, about the prospect of a hard Brexit because it would allow a deregulated playground for rich investors and business owners.

I actually think she may be a little starry eyed about that prospect, and I think there is a chunk of the Tory party that is far too enamoured of American style deregulation and hobbling of public service unions. They are Tea Party without the red necks.

I think the same as mathanxiety: a chunk of the Tory party haven't really got over the loss of the US colonies - hence their banging on about the Special relationship, which is only special as far as the US says "Jump" and we say "How High?".