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

[derxa]

placemarking

[SwedishEdith]

Agree Peregrina. And isn't May's delay with Hinkley to do with her concerns about the UK selling itself to China? Still in wait and see territory for me. I wonder if the grammar schools issue is a distraction from Brexit won't be what the Brexiters want (because no-one really knows what they want). Could be kidding myself, of course. May avoid thread for a while for fear of this being spelt out to me.

[OlennasWimple]

The Trump / Brexit link isn't being pushed that hard in the US press, IME, other than in a global swing to the right type analysis (there are other countries to include in this too)

[howabout]

Fair cheered me up seeing JC looking at universal income. This would be one way to get around the whole sorry mess Universal Credit has become. As I pointed out last week there are also people on the right of the political spectrum looking at it.

I am very much in favour of all schools being good comprehensives and all children going to their local schools. However the current mess of faith schools, free schools, LA schools and academies is very far from this. The link to catchment has also been massively eroded. The current SATs, as I understand it, bear no relation to grammar school or other types of academic selection criteria. Given the current state of affairs introducing new grammar schools may well be a step in the right direction given that wallets seem to be the main selection criteria just now.

Smiled at pretty's experiences with private education in Glasgow. My DF went to one of them and would have paid not to send his offspring to them.

[enochroot]

My DB and I were baby boomers who benefited from grammar school education but it is a very different situation now.
We were in a 4 form entry primary school and were streamed from the age of 7. The top class was prepared to take and pass the 11+ as a matter of course. There was no tutoring going on because there was no need. The teaching was geared to the task. (I can't speak for pupils in the other classes.)
Now it is, in my neck of the woods, unheard of for a primary school to have more than one class for a year group and that class is mixed ability. Teaching is geared to SATs and ensuring that as many as possible achieve the national average but not to prepare a small group for grammar school entry.
If a grammar school was set up in this area I have no doubt that many parents would seek out entrance exam tutoring rather than settle for the local comp which enjoys a very good reputation. The irony being that the comp is largely successful because it receives pupils of all abilities in a 22 sq m catchment. A local grammar school would peel off the best, representing those who are able to pay for tutoring, and leave the comprehensive school floundering.

[Floisme]

I took the 11 plus in the 60s. When the results came out, the teacher rearranged the class with everyone who had passed sitting at the front, the rest - who let's remember were in the majority - at the back.

We totally ignored them for that final few months. I don't just mean the teacher - we all did. I was a child but I still feel ashamed when I think about it now.

So no thanks Theresa May, at least not from me.

[Corcory]

Interesting to see Remainers talking about the possibility of a Hard Brexit when not so long ago Bearbehind started a thread entitled 'Brexit Lite here we come'! No matter what anyone said she was still adamant that TM had indicated this in her speak after her Italian visit.

[SapphireStrange]

Peregrina, she has to weigh that up against how much or how little she wants to piss off the leavers in her party and how much of a threat she thinks they will be if she goes for a light 'Fudgit'. She will be well aware that the EU issue has brought down three Tory PMs already in recent history.

[Kaija]

I'm not at all sure that we in the uk are actually going to have much control over the type of Brexit we end up with. Suspect that in practice the EU will have far more agency in this, and we will just have to hope that they see our interests as sufficiently aligned with the 27 to avoid an outcome that will be catastrophic for the UK.

[prettybird]

Howabout - to be fair, the selective school from my childhood was still a state school, albeit a special case (Jordanhill, so only selective if you were out of catchment). The "awful" () state schools damaging my prospects supposedly were Bearsden Primary and Bearsden Academy

Hutchie's were right to reject ds - but only because I know that they wouldn't have put the effort into him that his (catchment) primary school put into him as he wasn't developmentally ready to read until he was 6.5. His confidence would have been damaged and he would've been relegated to the "not bright enough" (as opposed to "not ready") group . As it is, he "caught up" by the time he was 9, is confident, free reads and is in the (very good) top set for English at his state school and we've saved the money that private education would've cost us

[derxa]

he "awful" (wink) state schools damaging my prospects supposedly were Bearsden Primary and Bearsden Academy

[TheBathroomSink]

Telegraph today suggesting the City is not that bothered about retaining financial passporting, and not keen on a Norway deal. Some would prefer complete exit from single market as it would return financial regulation to the UK, which I guess they think would allow them to get away with more.

[howabout]

Yes. The experience I have of Scottish private schools is very much that they are good if you fit the mould but not so much otherwise. Also worth noting all of them, and this applies equally to Jordanhill, flatter their results by recruiting in bright sparks for the senior years. I have at least one DD who would have found life easier at an academically selective school - would be playing to her strength. However she is getting so much more out of education from her comprehensive.

[whatwouldrondo]

pretty Yes there are a lot of issues about the nature of the education that grammar schools provide, especially if you add in the nature of a tutored cohort, and the sorts of pressures they can be put under, and parental expectations. Where there are outstanding comprehensives on offer as alternatives to the local grammars many parents do actually prefer the less pressured environment where their children will do just as well in top sets and in terms of university entrance, plus often with much better provision of sports and the arts.

Enoch single form of entry primaries are very thin on the ground in many parts of the country, there is a pupil bulge coming through and a school place crisis. It was certainly one of the issues were misplaced frustration focused on immigration whereas the reality is that as howabout highlights policy on school place provision is a mess and from area to area your options of a school place may be very different. In this area the predominance of faith schools means that if you are not prepared to sit in a pew then your options are very limited and might be restricted to a Free School set up by chains set up by a Dubai millionaire or dubious petro Saudi money.

[prettybird]

From the Telegraph article that TheBathroomSink linked to:

"The BBA wants the UK to leave the single market but retain unimpeded access to EU markets."



They would, wouldn't they? Oh look, there's a unicorn

[enochroot]

I'm looking at it from a rural perspective where one primary school or another faces closure and DD is 24 now so my direct experience is limited.
Floisme I know what you mean. We never mixed with the other classes even in the playground. There was a social divide based on educational expectation right from the start because that decision to stream us in that way took place at the age of 7. I recalled that when 'oldies' got the blame for the Leave vote. The baby boomers I know, even now, voted Remain but a huge percentage of my age group were dealt an entirely different hand of cards.

[howabout]

Saw this t-shirt in a shop window yesterday and thought of you all

www.chicksrule.co.uk/goodie-two-sleeves-t-shirt-the-last-unicorn-19263.html

[SapphireStrange]

pretty, I know. How I laughed at that.

[RedToothBrush]

I've noticed that a lot of USA press articles link Brexit and Trump and are extremely negative in their forecasts of the outcome of Brexit. It strikes me that the UK really is being used as a 'cautionary tale'. It makes me wonder at the effect of this on support for Trump in the USA. Will it diminish that support?

Very few people in the states that matter will be reading that stuff. The majority that do, will be in heavily democrat states. That's really the issue. Plus they are still in the arrogant mindset that 'most people won't be that stupid to vote Trump' because they don't really get it.

My very anglophile educated American friends certainly don't.

[Peregrina]

She will be well aware that the EU issue has brought down three Tory PMs already in recent history.

Recent commentators are all saying this, but my strong recollection, shared by others, (including Michael Heseltine), was that it was the Poll Tax which did for Maggie Thatcher, and not especially the EU. She had negotiated the rebate for the UK. Then Maggie, after the poll tax fiasco, appeared to be going totally off her rocker which finished her off.

Yes, the Eurosceptics definitely brought down Major and Cameron, but this has also been coupled with very slender majorities. If either of them had enjoyed Thatcher style majorities, I suspect they would have both been able to contain the Eurosceptics.

[Unicornsarelovely]

It's also worth remembering with Major that he was at the end of an 18 year period of Tory rule and he could have conjured up flying unicorns carrying money and people would still have voted for Blair.

It was certainly an issue for him but perhaps not as fundamental as is now painted.

I suspect it was more of an issue for William Hague and then scuppered Ken Clarke when he ran for leader.

[prettybird]

Re education, I must admit to being ever so slightly hypocritical as ds is a placing request at his school (in Scotland, everyone has a guaranteed place at their catchment school and the catchments are fixed but you can choose to make a placing request, which may or may not be accepted) - but it's only 5 minutes further walk away (and no further than some that are in catchment). There was a real sporting reason for the placing request (the school is an SRU funded "School of Rugby" so for his 1st 2 years he had 4 periods a week given over to rugby (2 x PE, 1 English and 1 Maths), but I'll also acknowledge that the depute at ds' primary school said that he would be happier at this secondary (even though it wasn't the one they fed to).

We don't have separate "independent" state faith schools like England; we have a parallel Catholic state system, also with defined catchments (what we call "denominational" as opposed to "non-denominational"). There are a couple of other "religious" schools but they're the exception rather than the rule. And then there's Jordanhill, which is the closest thing we have to an (English style) Academy in Scotland - but it's an historical anomaly.

We've also not had any restrictions on building new state schools - although the static population in Scotland means that's less of an issue (there's been more of an issue with closing schools with declining rolls with only a recent bulge creating new pressure - ds' old primary has just been rebuilt at double the size and no room for placing requests).

I agree with howabout (and others) that education is about so much more than just crammed exam results. Tell that to Gove, Morgan et al though

Bringing it back to the original premise of these threads, grammar, academy and elite schools, combined with over-crowded or failing "local" schools have probably contributed to the disenfranchisement and disillusion that fed the Brexit vote

[SapphireStrange]

I find this article fairly convincing about Thatcher and Europe. There are others, including a BBC News one, along the same lines.

May also has a slim majority and must be aware that the swivel-eyed loon faction are therefore quite powerful.

[enochroot]

My memory of the Major government is of scandal after scandal so I checked and this is what I found:-

At the 1993 Conservative Party Conference, Major began the "Back to Basics" campaign, which he intended to also be about a wide variety of issues including the economy, education and policing, but which was interpreted by many (including Conservative cabinet ministers) purely in the context of returning to the moral and family values that they associated with the Conservative Party.[34]

Instead of being well received, "Back to Basics" instead became synonymous with scandal, often exposed in lurid and embarrassing detail by tabloid newspapers such as The Sun. In 1992, David Mellor, a cabinet minister, had been exposed as having an extramarital affair and for accepting hospitality from the daughter of a leading member of the Palestine Liberation Organization.[35] The wife of the Earl of Caithness committed suicide amongst rumours of the Earl committing adultery.[36] Stephen Milligan was found dead having apparently auto-asphyxiated whilst performing a solitary sex act (his Eastleigh seat was lost in what was to be an ongoing stream of hefty by-election defeats).[37] David Ashby was "outed" by his wife after sleeping with men.[36] A string of other Conservative MPs, including Alan Amos, Tim Yeo, and Michael Brown, were involved in sexual scandals.[38]

Other debilitating scandals included "Arms to Iraq" – the ongoing inquiry into how government ministers including Alan Clark (also involved in an unrelated scandal involving the revelation of his affair with the wife and both daughters of a South African judge) had encouraged businesses to supply arms to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, in breach of the official arms embargo, and how senior ministers had, on legal advice, attempted to withhold evidence of this official connivance when directors of Matrix Churchill were put on trial for breaking the embargo.[39]

Another scandal was "Cash for Questions", in which first Graham Riddick, and David Tredinnick accepted money to ask questions in the House of Commons in a newspaper "sting", and later Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton were found to have received money from Mohamed Al-Fayed, also to ask questions in the House. Later, David Willetts resigned as Paymaster General after he was accused of rigging evidence to do with Cash for Questions.[40]

Defence Minister Jonathan Aitken was accused by the ITV investigative journalism series World in Action and The Guardian newspaper of secretly doing deals with leading Saudi princes. He denied all accusations and promised to wield the "sword of truth" in libel proceedings which he brought against The Guardian and the producers of World in Action Granada Television. At an early stage in the trial, it became apparent that he had lied under oath, and he was subsequently (after the Major government had fallen from power) convicted of perjury and sentenced to a term of imprisonment.[41]

Major attempted to draw some of the sting from the financial scandals by setting up public inquiries – the Nolan Report into standards expected in public life, and the Scott Report into the Arms to Iraq Scandal.[42]

Although Tim Smith stepped down from the House of Commons at the 1997 General Election, both Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken sought re-election for their seats, and were both defeated, in Hamilton's case by the former BBC Reporter Martin Bell, who stood as an anti-sleaze candidate, both the Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates withdrawing in his favour, amidst further publicity unfavourable to the Conservatives.[43]

Major later commented in his memoirs on the "routine" with which he would be telephoned over the weekend to be warned of the latest embarrassing story due to break. He wrote that he took a stern line against financial impropriety, but was angered at the way in which a host of scandals, many of them petty sexual misdemeanours by a small number of MPs, were exploited by the press and Opposition for political advantage. He also conceded that the issue "fed the public belief that the Conservative(s) ... had been in government too long, and had got into bad habits" and quoted Labour's claim in 1997: "Nothing better encapsulates what people think of this government. Sleaze will be one of the things which brings this government down."

[SwedishEdith]

I had forgotten about so many of those scandals - Stephen Milligan. Oddly, Major was himself then involved in his own sexual one (when out of power).