Westministenders. Boris and co learn the basics - and limits - of British sovereignty and democracy.

[RedToothBrush]

There is a plan.

It is not a very good one, but May says she has a plan.

As May declared a revolution and set out her vision for a Britain ‘open’ for free trade and hard working people she managed to further drive in the wedge of division into a society which needed measured and sensitive handling.

Her speech was met, with much derision and horror both here and abroad. Even UKIP voices say the Conservatives went too far.

Brexit began to take shape. It appeared hard and fast. Without the consent of parliament. It was to be run by the executive alone. As the ex-Polish Foreign Minister points out, the shape of it decided because it was viewed as the ‘easiest’ option. Not the one in the best interests of the country. Leaving the EU has become indistinguishable to the Single Market. We are told by Mr Davis that there is no down side to this.

Then something else began to happen and the plan is beginning to not look so clever…

The pound plunged.

Mr Hammond, who has seemed to have resisted the urge to take the hallucinatory drugs being handed out in vast quantities around the Cabinet Table, came out saying that we must consider the economic reality of Brexit.

It was followed by a leaked paper that put the cost of Hard Brexit at between £38bn and £66bn a year. Our EU membership cost £8bn last year. Where are those NHS buses now?

The government response? Oh that was George. He just made it up for ‘Project Fear’. Or something to that effect.

The government on the one hand were saying how great Brexit will be, yet were not prepared to make the case in parliament. The Times editorial came out as categorically for the Single Market. Even the Sun on Sunday editorial spoke up for the Single Market (though was still in the land of cake wanting immigration control too).

David Davis took to the Commons to answer questions and was met with a chorus of rising alarm. Whilst he confirmed that the majority of EU citizens here do have their right to remain here as being their legal entitlement, it does not guarantee their rights under this. He echoed the language of the citizen of nowhere in May’s speech and, perhaps can be seen to make, the stark message that you should consider taking on British Citizenship.

Parliament has started to wake up to what is at stake. It is not just whether we stay in the EU or not, but Brexit presents a challenge to democratic processes and threatens to bypass the checks and balances to power that parliament is supposed to provide. It is a threat to our international reputation as a champion of liberal values and democratic stature. It is a threat to our economic security. It is a threat to our diplomatic relations, with the reckless comments and language coming from some. .

The stirrings of rebellion and a credible opposition come from a variety of quarters. From both leavers and remainers alike. From every party including the governments. Initially the government refused to give, so Labour announced an opposition debate on transparency of Brexit and it all started to fall apart. Faced with a vote they could not get enough support to win they made an apparent U-Turn and agreed to parliamentary scrutiny of the government’s position ahead of a50 within certain limits.

Keir Starmer, making the point that Human Rights Lawyers are not to be messed with, has written 170 questions, one for every day before the end of March when a50 is due to be triggered, for Davis to respond to.

However, the agreement to this debate on negotiations is none binding and there is no date for it as yet. The government must not be allowed to pay lip service to rebels. They must be held to this reversal.

Today’s opposition debate seems to suggest that the government definition of scrutiny is wheeling out David Davies and get him to waffle a lot and not say anything. This has gone down like a lead balloon. The government can not maintain this. Something will give. He has still refused to release a green or white paper which many expected.

May’s choice will be blunt. She either keeps pretending Santa is real and can deliver the pony whilst losing the house in the process or she owns up to the looming cold hard truth of reality.

May might be fully committed to taking us off the cliff top no matter what but she’s going to have to fight to get there.

In the best interests of the country the pressure must be kept up. There must be resistance to the ‘Little England’ mentality and orders by the Mail and the Express to silence those unpatriotic ‘agents of Brussels’ who are raising legitimate concerns that need to be considered as part of the process.

Its either this or we will have to rely on the proposed new Royal Yacht to send Kate off round the world begging for trade deals “to once again project the prestige of this nation across the globe” as Mr Gove says. Prestige we still had before the referendum was announced.

General Election before we leave Europe. Likely.

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes
Some tweets about the chances of a 2017 or 2018 election, based on conversations over last fortnight and this piece.
www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/election-looms-next-year-as-tory-europhiles-hold-whip-hand-bvrjtngzt

From thinking a pre 2020 election was off the cards before we headed to Birmingham for Tory conference, now I think it can't be discounted.

TM may not want to call one from a position of strength. But I report here why she may end up having to from a position of weakness. Why...

This week just gone showed that the Commons has the potential to cause more trouble than expected. And the Great Repeal Bill - the European Communities Bill (ECB) as known - could be a vehicle for rebellion. One Cabinet minister is reportedly saying that Theresa May is likely to lose the ECB in Commons or Lords & when this happens TM calls elec.

Early numbers look ominious. Even with the DUP, the government's working majority is 34, meaning only 17 need to switch sides in a vote. One informal view: around 5 Tory MPs publicly critical & up to 20 privately signalling they r prepared to vote against gvt for a soft Brexit.

"It looks like we've swapped 20 hard Eurosceptics for a 20 strong group of Europhiles", said one member of the government.

A further 30 remain-supporters may cause trouble in future & there are even one or two Brexiteers unhappy with making migration the priority. Tory MPs may be brought into line with threats and turning key votes into confidence votes but Parliamentary defeats on Brexit very damaging.

... And that's before the traditional right, who want Theresa May to contemplate WTO rules, find something to rebel on. Which they will. Another group of Brexiteers say UK-EU deal bound to largely fail and cause significant pain. So have a "clean" break" to WTO then election.

3rd suggestion is Theresa holds a quickie snap election straight after triggering Article 50, while Europe working on A50 response/elections

Meanwhile George Osborne is meeting groups of Tory MPs for drinks...

I can't read the Times article (paywall) but the first two paragraphs read as follows:

There is a febrile atmosphere among Conservative MPs in the House of Commons. Whips are now seen monitoring the drinking holes, apparently there in shifts. They hang around the Thameside Strangers Bar after dinner, observing who is saying what to whom, just in case.

This is the new sternness of Theresa May’s dealings with her party. Gavin Williamson, the chief whip, takes pride in his “turn the clock back” approach to party management. Tory MPs may find he has less time for the softly-softly techniques of his immediate predecessors. His job is to make the parliamentary party look as unified…

What the actual fuck?! Monitoring her own MPs?!

www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/15/brexit-cross-party-mps-renew-calls-for-parliamentary-scrutiny?CMP=share_btn_tw
Brexit: cross-party MPs renew calls for parliamentary scrutiny

In a further sign that cross-party alliances are forming in favour of a soft Brexit, former party leaders Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg will join forces with the shadow Brexit minister, Keir Starmer, and the former Tory minister Nick Herbert to demand a Commons debate this week.

A new poll exclusively revealed to the Observer shows a clear majority of the British public supporting continued membership of the single market, despite the narrow 23 June vote to leave the EU. Of those surveyed in a poll commissioned by Open Britain, the successor to Britain Stronger in Europe, 59% of people wanted to stay in the single market, while 41% wanted to leave.

and

While the survey shows remain voters overwhelmingly support staying in the single market, leave voters are divided, with 45% believing the UK should leave the single market, 28% saying it should stay in, and 26% not sure.

Alarmingly for ministers leading the push for hard Brexit, a majority of all voters believe such an approach would leave Britain worse off. Of them, 58% say leaving the single market would have a negative impact on the economy, while 32% believe the country would fare better outside the single market and 12% do not think leaving would make any difference.

Ahem. Someone is out for Johnson.

Tim Shipman ‏@ShippersUnbound
Boris Johnson's secret article supporting Remain, written 2 days before he backed Brexit, will be revealed tonight in the Sunday Times

I think I'm only the fifth person to read Boris's case for Remain.

Boris actually wrote 3 articles. Only the third was ever published. You can read both of the first two in my book
[All out war: The full story of how Brexit sank Britain's political class]

Boris wrote one for out and another for in and then the published third piece answered some of the points he made in the remain one

Boris says now we should be outside the single market but in Remain piece he sd "The membership fee seems rather small for all that access." Boris also warned that Brexit would cause an “economic shock” and could lead to the “break up” of the United Kingdom. Boris's Remain article warns Brexit cd "encourage more shirtless swaggering from the Russian leader". Now dealing with that as foreign sec

The big secret about the Boris remain article though is that he appears to have written it so it was deliberately rubbish to support Brexit

Did Boris really back remain? You can read his whole article in the Sunday Times tomorrow and judge for yourselves

My book also reveals that Boris told a fellow MP "I wanted to punch" Michael Gove after he tried to apologise for betraying him

Boris's leadership campaign manager Ben Wallace warned him day before he declared for out that backing Brexit would HURT his bid for No 10

Boris campaign manager Wallace emailed him to say he would be with a "cast of clowns" if he backed Brexit - day before he did so. Wallace email shows Boris was being advised NOT to back Brexit to help his career. Maybe he wasn't so cynical after all

Reports are Johnson is supporting Hammond about the Single Market...

Sensible article about trade deals and interim agreements in the Telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/10/15/we-need-an-interim-deal-with-the-eu-before-leaving-the-single-ma/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

None of the German tabloids (and they are nasty, sexist papers) today, or in recent years, would print such xenophobic and racist bile as done every single day by the British tabloid.

For the simple reason, I think, that they know exactly where it leads to. As a country they have had to spend a long time morally rehabilitating themselves. When we faced the same threat, many of our upper classes happily went along with it, but other social classes fought against it as in e.g. the battle of Cable Street. Would we get an equivalent defence of a Cable Street today?

Great post Red, thank you.

" Would we get an equivalent defence of a Cable Street today?"

I think about this a lot at the moment, Peregrina. Trouble is, they're not all gathered together in one street, they're all over the Internet. How do you fight that?

Yes, thanks for that last post, red. Some potentially encouraging news there.

Has that Boris Remain report been leaked as a prelude to him positioning himself as PM then? Which would explain him allying himself with Hammond? Interesting.

Or does he just want to get out of the job of Foreign Secretary, it being a bit too much like hard work for him?

Wrt the Spiegel article opening sentences about Europeans being nonplussed about the 'fit of irrationality' (and this is just me typing for the heck of it really) my dad had a really, really old book called iirc 'Portrait of Europe', by Salvador de Madariaga, a former Spanish diplomat of old (he fled Franco's Spain), who was also a historian and writer, and dreamed of European cohesion. It was his opinion that the English were profoundly irrational people.

Yes Lilabee, I agree UK tabloids are particularly xenophobic and that's a big part of how we ended up with Brexit.

However I'm not sure I agree that the Spiegel article didn't mention the problem of 'existing class structures': there was a whole section on Eton Boys!

What is frightening is that the tabloids and Brexit politicians don't realise what nastiness they've unleashed in the nation, for short-term political gain.

And Boris Johnson (who today we see even more clearly how meaningless and insincere his Brexit gambit was) can't put the genie back inside the bottle.

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.spiegel.de/international/europe/united-kingdom-and-brexit-searching-for-the-true-britain-a-1116325-amp.html?client=safari

Good article Hester. Thanks for linking.

I'm more cynical less generous: I think the tabloids (or at least their owners) and the Brexit politicians were fully aware of the nastiness they were unleashing as it fitted with both their short and long term vision for the country. They will not just be insulated from the damage caused, but will be positioned to profit from it

Prettybird I agree in that it was probably a cynical move for profit, but do you really think they'll be insulated from all the damage caused?

The tabloid newspaper proprietors will certainly profit. And it seems that politicians can come back from disgrace, or lie openly, with impunity, and even if they don't come back they carry on minting it via the after-dinner circuit etc.

Look at Liam Fox. Massive errors of judgement that led to him resigning as Defence Secretary. A big spender in the expenses scandal. And now he's the Secretary of State for International Trade, and a key member of the Brexit cabinet.

And yet it seems it's only Remainers who are outraged by his appointment!

I suspect that many people in government do realise what a total mess this is. The problem is that there were 2 leave campaigns and some very different voting priorities. The Leave voters in seaside towns etc did not listen to Michael Gove. They listened to Farage and he is still beating the same drum and has no interest whatsoever in social cohesion. The Cabinet leavers could decide to fall on their swords and say 'we got it wrong' but that would just play into the hands of the the far right. The real problem is the lack of a proper opposition in Parliament (honourable exception being Kier Stamer). Saint Jeremy and his merry band of worshippers are a national disgrace, every bit as culpable in all this as Boris and Gove. Sorting this out needs very brave leadership from people with a genuine sense of public service and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much of that ethic in the current generation if professional politicians.

On a tangent a pp referred above to Justice Goddard's alleged racist comments. I am married to a Kiwi and visit NZ a lot. I find it very, very hard to believe the remarks attributed to her. NZ is a diverse country and the history there with the Maori people means equality and rights of minority cultures has been embedded into their legislation for a long time. There are racist Kiwi's but I really find it very hard to believe that a NZ judge would not be hyper aware on these issues.

I do think that they live in a different world. I don't think that they believe that their comfortable existence will be disturbed (they may well be wrong in that ) - but even if it is, they have the resources to decamp to, say, Monaco ironically or some other tax haven.

Murdoch is now an American citizen. He doesn't have to live here.

As a country they have had to spend a long time morally rehabilitating themselves

In Britain there is still a strong narrative that only Germans do that kind of thing, it could never possibly happen in Britain, we are the good guys etc. etc.

I

Here's the leaked Boris article from The Sunday Times. No surprises really and it is quite scathing on Europe. (I love the shade thrown by the [sic] thrown after his incorrect reference to Hercules)

It’s the article Boris Johnson tried to bury — the case for remaining in the EU, written at the same time as one backing Brexit. Could these words have changed British history?

My favourite comment is from one Andrew Wilson, 'We already knew that our foreign secretary is a lying hypocritical buffoon. Now we discover that this self-appointed expert on the EU understands nothing about the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, the function of the European Court of Justice or the meaning of the first article of the EU Treaty.'

SwedishEdith Sat 15-Oct-16 19:57:31
Tory MEP Edward McMillan-Scott has written to voters in Witney asking them to vote Lib Dem. It's on Twitter so can't copy but on Mike Smithson's account. I know it won't overturn the Tory majority but still... interesting.

File attached.

Yes Liberty, I agree they're playing fast and loose with social cohesion, for economic/ political gain. We do need 'people with a genuine sense of public service' to work towards social equality as this is the only way forward. Personally I don't believe the wealthy can insulate themselves long term from the division of society.

Prettybird, I agree, they may be wrong about their comfortable existence being undisturbed. And Murdoch may now have the right to live in the US, but look what's happening there.

I think HUGE chickens may come home to roost in the next few years. I've not seen such corrosive political turmoil in my lifetime.

I would like Boris to resign now.

I dunno. That's a strategic leak. By Boris.

I agree about the strategic leak. Who else would know what he wrote at the time?

What is he getting out of the leak?

He didn't look very pleased with his cabinet appointment at the time. I suspect he doesn't like the way the wind is blowing now MPs have started standing up and saying this issue is so big that it transcends party politics. I suspect he wants out and to skulk around on the back benches, to jump back in when he feels the time is better to pursue his own political ambitions, whatever they are then.