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

Re: Sadiq Khan, the Corbyn wing of the party have been claiming that the London mayoral election prove how electable Corbyn is but Khan won despite not because of Corbyn. He did everything he could to distance himself from the Dear Leader and Corbyn notoriously refused to attend his inauguration or even to congratulate him very effusively.

Peregrina - dh and I often despair over the same thing.

We love the States but we (as in the UK) seem to have this propensity to bring across all the worst things from the States, like unhealthy working practices (including at a managerial level, excessive hours or just simple presenteeism), devaluing 1st degrees with the 50% target of "going to Uni" and just changing the name of some institutions, imposing eye-watering fees for uni...., while not adopting some of the better aspects like weekends/public holidays being sacrosanct have to be when you get a smaller annual leave allocation, true federalism, the aspiration to "be your own boss".....

At least we get the best of their TV

Toby Helm writes on Brexit in the Guardian link
He really just draws attention to the utter omnishambles that is going on with the Tory Brexit negotiators.
I am going to keep my eyes peeled if we join the new Europol treaty.

Are we getting the Labour party ballot papers tomorrow? The round robin emails from Corbyn are getting increasingly fractious and demand loyalty (I admitted being an Owen Smith supporter to them).

TheNorth - I think they go out tomorrow, according to Twitter, so you should get them Tuesday/Wednesday-ish.

Anyway, Iain Duncan Smith has decided now is a good time for him to stick his oar in to the Brexit shenanigans, like they weren't already enough of a farce:
"Tired of handing over billions of their hard-earned money to the wasteful EU bureaucrats, it [the referendum result] was an order from the British people to Britain's ruling elite - an order to 'take back control’,” he wrote.

"That, simply put, means control of our borders, our trade arrangements, our money and our laws.”

He is also in favour of leaving the single market.

I think it is going to get very nasty in the next few weeks when Parliament comes back and there's still no real indication of what Brexit means. Of course, it'll get even nastier once we find out what Brexit does mean (other than 'Brexit') and discover that it is something that makes almost no-one happy...

our money
Did we join the Euro when no one was looking?

In what passes for IDS's brain, I'm sure we have

Just read the IDS article, and thought 'Does this man live on the same planet as me?'

To be fair to IDS, I think by "our money", he means the money raised through taxes and tax-like levies (NI, student loan repayments) and by flogging off the family silver.

He wants the UK government to decide on where that money should go. Top of the list being, presumably, replacing the farming subsidies his in-laws will lose once we leave the EU.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/george-galloway-respect-party-deregisters-labour-jeremy-corbyn-member-a7202191.html
George Galloway, set to rejoin Labour after Respect deregisters?

blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/how-leave-won-twitter/
How leave won twitter (and social media).
I would like to point out here, that this is why people should make lots of noise now, preferably of more than 240 characters both on here, and directed towards their MPs.

www.historytoday.com/jack-peacock/separate-australia
A history lesson about how Western Australia's separated from Australia. (yep they voted for a Brexit).

IDS says:
“What they didn’t vote for was EU-lite, or for their government to engage in negotiations where we bend the knee to Brussels and beg for some concessions whilst remaining in a customs union all the while subject to European law.”
What's my point? Nobody has voted FOR anything and that any such statements are merely an interpretation of someone trying to further their own aims and goals rather than there being some sort of consensus over what anyone voted FOR.

Isn't it interesting that IDS is trying to make the point to the contrary? Is that because its starting to be pointed out that no one has voted FOR anything, Brexiteers are starting to worry about that and a50 gets kicked down the road a bit?

George Galloway, set to rejoin Labour after Respect deregisters?

That always ends well, doesn't it?!

I think IDS is just pointing out that he's still there. He didn't really say anything Farage didn't say the other day, so I suspect he's just trying to get the attention back, because otherwise there's really no point to him, is there? Probably with a bit of 'if we keep telling them this is what they voted for, they might not realise that it isn't' mixed in for good measure.

Galloway always says he left Labour. Several senior Labour figures have said in the past that if he hadn't have left he would have been kicked due to his conduct. How true that is, I don't know.

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/the-world-is-now-ours-shame-its-in-such-a-mess-jb6083385

Times article about how Brexit Britain is going to cope in a world with growing protectionism.

thenorth, the ballots for NEC are coming out by email from tomorrow.
Much as I have my doubts about Owen Smith I think he's getting my vote now. As the campaign has gone on I increasingly don't want to line up alongside the more unpleasant of the Corbyn supporters. They seem to have missed the bit about a kinder politics.
I know what you mean about the emails, the latest one purported to come from one of the members who took the NEC to court and told me how unfair it was. It backfired with me, my take being yes great you've joined a party, good collective thing to do, then as a first action you take it to court. The waste of money alone gives me the rage, how many books of raffle tickets does that represent?

I thought that this was an interesting commentary on the Death of Neoliberatilsm. I hadn't realised that the author had been an editor of Marxism Today, which will obviously put a slant on things.

Certain parts particularly resonated:
“‘Populism’ is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don’t like.” Populism is a movement against the status quo.............. Brexit is a classic example of such populism. It has overturned a fundamental cornerstone of UK policy since the early 1970s. Though ostensibly about Europe, it was in fact about much more: a cri de coeur from those who feel they have lost out and been left behind, whose living standards have stagnated or worse since the 1980s, who feel dislocated by large-scale immigration over which they have no control and who face an increasingly insecure and casualised labour market. Their revolt has paralysed the governing elite, already claimed one prime minister, and left the latest one fumbling around in the dark looking for divine inspiration.

Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great deal better. David Cameron was guilty of a huge and irresponsible miscalculation over Brexit. He was forced to resign in the most ignominious of circumstances. The party is hopelessly divided. It has no idea in which direction to move after Brexit. The Brexiters painted an optimistic picture of turning away from the declining European market and embracing the expanding markets of the world, albeit barely mentioning by name which countries it had in mind. It looks as if the new prime minister may have an anachronistic hostility towards China and a willingness to undo the good work of George Osborne. If the government turns its back on China, by far the fastest growing market in the world, where are they going to turn?

I can't say that I wholly agree with the second paragraph - especially the 'good work of George Osborne'. As for the PM's attitude to China, I expect that she will knuckle down and vote for Hinckley C in due course, but may be a little less keen to seek out deals with China that GO was.

The comments below the article make for interesting reading from 'load of rubbish' to 'good analysis'.

Peregrina I thought his emphasis on the working classes having delivered Brexit was a bit wide of the mark since as we have discussed ad nauseum on here the leave vote was a more complex union of constituencies Jacques is a China historian, he wrote "When China rules the world" which gives you a bit of a clue about his somewhat subjective view on modern China. He is almost as in thrall as Tim Garton Ash. However he is quite sound on the history and culture of China and makes this point in his TED talk "but Europeans by and large, I have to say, are ignorant, are unaware about the way the world is changing. Some people I've got an English friend in China, and he said, "The continent is sleepwalking into oblivion." Well, maybe that's true, maybe that's an exaggeration. But there's another problem which goes along with this that Europe is increasingly out of touch with the world -- and that is a sort of loss of a sense of the future. I mean, Europe once, of course, once commanded the future in its confidence. Take the 19th century, for example. But this, alas, is no longer true." www.ted.com/talks/martin_jacques_understanding_the_rise_of_china/transcript?language=en

That was what underpinned my remain vote, that only as a unified geopolitical bloc can Europe hope to play a political and economic role in a world that is rapidly changing. The Leave vote keep saying they are outward facing but there is absolutely no evidence that any of them have the slightest clue about the ways in which the world has and is changing. Osbourne was perhaps a bit naive, but May's reaction on Hinkley had a distinct whiff of the 19th century, except of course that in the nineteenth century we refused to kowtow www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/16/theresa-may-writes-letter-reassurance-chinese-president-xi-jinping-hinkley-point-c?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Jacque's other piece in the Guardian was also interesting www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/21/easternisation-war-peace-asian-century-gideon-rachman-review?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Especially, given past debates on here "but he is perhaps most interesting of all on Russia, displaying a real feel for a country that too often is the subject of demonisation rather than understanding. In particular, I enjoyed his discussion of the way in which Russia has historically shifted between a European and an Asiatic orientation, with the latter now once more beginning to supersede the former."

Yes, ron I thought myself he was rather belabouring the working classes delivering Brexit, when as far as I am concerned, it was most definitely the Tory backwoods people who are mainly responsible. I have yet to see any good analysis, or indeed any analysis, of them, and why they voted the way they did.

I am sure that he is essentially right about China.

Another interesting guardian article this morning giving a Leaver's perspective on the Brexit strategy so far

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/20/brexit-eu-referendum-economy-project-fear

I read an interesting article yesterday looking at the Hinkley point decision (sorry didn't keep the ref). However the general gist was questioning whether green power and battery technology will render it obsolete before it is even on stream. The conclusion then is that maintaining gas and coal to the extent necessary, even if there are short run consequences for emissions targets, makes more sense.

So in short, I think the editor of Marxism today is missing how much realignment the Tories have already done and I also think he is wrong about China.

I was doing some Olympic based population research with the kids at the weekend. The India, China and surrounding population is 4 billion plus. In that context I think the EU (less than 0.5 billion) is inevitably of decreasing importance to the UK's future prosperity. Also in that context I think the need for an EU block to counterbalance the US is already diminishing.

A wee bit behind the conversation but all the questioning of the relevance of the BBA's opinion on the banking sector was bothering me a bit last week.

^What is the BBA?

The BBA is the leading trade association for the UK banking sector with 200 member banks headquartered in over 50 countries with operations in 180 jurisdictions worldwide. Eighty per cent of global systemically important banks are members of the BBA. As the representative of the world’s largest international banking cluster the BBA is the voice of UK banking.

We have the largest and most comprehensive policy resources for banks in the UK and represent our members domestically, in Europe and on the global stage. Our network also includes over 80 of the world’s leading financial and professional services organisations. Our members manage more than £7 trillion in UK banking assets, employ nearly half a million individuals nationally, contribute over £60 billion to the UK economy each year and lend over £150 billion to UK businesses.^

www.bba.org.uk/about-us/

I find the Larry Elliott piece quite meaningless,TBH. We haven't even STARTED the process of leaving yet!

Spending tends to go up in summer because the nice weather means people are out more. Also, the Bank of England has deployed some quite extreme measures to keep us afloat – for the short term.

I also can't help but think of the story recounted by someone on here whose neighbour, the day before the vote, said to them, 'Can't wait! After tomorrow, no more immigrants!'

A tiny and anecdotal story, I know, but I wonder how she's feeling?

As a Remainer, I don't feel that I look 'a bit silly', as the author assumes we do.

whatwouldrondo the Gideon Rachman review resonates strongly with my views on the need for "the West" to start thinking differently about the East. I would add that it is not just the US and Europe but much more importantly International institutions such as the IMF which need to realign.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/22/brexit-means-brexit-when-is-big-question?CMP=share_btn_tw
So when?

www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/08/how-snps-deputy-leadership-race-could-pave-way-pro-corbyn-pact
SNP deputy leadership race could pave the way to a pro corbyn pact

blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/brexit-means-brexit-but-the-norway-model-is-clearly-the-least-worst-option/?utm_content=buffer278a0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
LSE Norway is the least worst option

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/andrea-leadsoms-tory-leadership-times-interview-was-a-cock-up-admits-campaign-manager_uk_57ba2fe1e4b0f78b2b4a7112?a19yhkt9&
Leadsom's Times Interview was a cock up admits campaign manager.
No shit.

Norway is the least worst option
I've long thought this. It gives me a certain amount of bloody-minded pleasure to think of swivel-eyed Leavers being incensed about not being able to control free movement.

I could cry at the prospect of losing our seat at the table for decisions, though. And of course, those Leavers hung up on 'sovereignty' won't be best pleased, one assumes, on realising that we will still have to accept EU-wide decisions without having been involved in them.