Westministenders. Boris has lost it. Time for that emergency budge--- er tax giveaway.

[RedToothBrush]

Bloody hell where are we up to?

Trump is preparing for the White House. He has refused to give up his assets which will be a conflict of interest and maybe lead to corruption. He has just settled a fraud case out of court. One of the cases of illegal sexual behaviour has collapsed after the claimant was too afraid to proceed. His VP believes in stopping all abortions by any means necessary and beliefs in gay conversion therapy. He has appointed a white supremacist as his chief strategist. His attorney general is regarded as amnesty’s biggest enemy opposing just about all human rights bills as a senator. He has also been dogged by accusations of racism. His national security advisor supports torture techniques such as water boarding. These three appointments have been greeted with delight from the former leader of the KKK.

Man of the people, Nigel Farage is trying to undermine Theresa May and sideline the government by cozying up to Trump in front of a couple of gold doors. His long term intentions look increasingly wider than purely being about the EU and ever more sinister in nature. He is in danger of doing a rather good Moseley impression.

Meanwhile rumours persist of voter suppression and dubious election practices in several key states, which are hugely undemocratic and Hillary Clinton wins the popular vote.

These are all things you are supposed to ignore, and are just expected to believe that everything is okay and that it’s the fault of liberals for standing up for discrimination and that this discrimination is none existent in the first place. Unless your Head of State is named Merkel.

But don’t worry, our Head of State is set to intervene though. The Queen is due to invite Trump to Windsor and is our secret weapon. Like Kate is our secret Brexit weapon. The cost of this intervention? A £396million refurb of Buck Pally. If she can pull that off, hell, let’s just send her to Brussels instead of Johnson. We might get some good will even if Philip drops a clanger about prosecco.

Back in the UK, the a50 saga drags on. The NI case now joins the ‘People’s Challenge’ at the Supreme Court, as well as new representation coming from both the Scottish Government and Welsh assembly. The government defence has changed, with one of the key changes has been to describe our rights under the EU as different by calling them “internationally established rights” and therefore different to domestic rights. They now say that they previously agreed with the claimant that a50 was irrevocable, their position is now that whether it is irrevocable or revocable is irrelevant to the strength of the case, effectively leaving it open for the devolved governments to pursue this line.

Previously it was assumed that this would require a referral to the ECJ. It is not necessarily the case. The situation is more complex as was outlined in a HoC Library Briefing. In this, it states a referral might be legal unavoidable as otherwise could be open to damages, might not be needed as the Supreme Court itself holds the power to decide whether a50 is reversible or not or that the Supreme Court does not have the authority to refer until after a50 has been triggered (which changes the dynamics of things).

Even then, it might prove to be legally possible but politically impossible to reverse, it might require a unanimous agreement to reverse by the other 27 which might enforce conditions in doing so.

Several senior Conservatives have called for the government to drop the appeal. Oliver Letwin, argues that it is might up the government up to being vetoed by the devolved assemblies, Dominic Grieve thinks its simply unlikely to win, and Edward Garnier has said it leaves “an opportunity for ill motivated people to attack the judiciary and misconstrue the motives of both parties to the lawsuit”.

One of the Supreme Court judges has been criticised for outlining the case to law students in a speech due to misreporting. In the speech she said that the referendum was not legally binding before going on to explain that an act of parliament to trigger a50 might not be enough and that the Great Repeal Act might have to be passed to replace the European Communities Act before we can notify the EU of our intent to leave if the defense case holds up before she went on to explain the government’s position. Another Supreme Court judge has been called to excuse himself after his wife made pro-EU tweets as obviously by nature of being married, is completely biased.

A former lord chief justice has now warned that Liz Truss has caused a “constitutional breakdown” and may have broken the law by failing to defend judges.

I’m putting money on the live video feed of the Supreme Court breaking due to ‘unprecedented demand’. This of course is a conspiracy.

At the same time a Three Line Bill for a50 is prepared to put to the HoC with the intention that the HoC and HoL would not ‘dare defy it’. Except the Lib Dem Lords are suggesting they see no reason why they shouldn’t table an amendment that ensures parliamentary scrutiny and have consulted a constitutional lawyer over the matter. The feeling is that, if they don’t do this, then what is the point of the HoL? At the same time, measures to restrict the powers of the HoL over statutory instruments have also been dropped. This seems to be a good thing given the timing, until you find out the apparent reason; they apparently will need these powers to enact the Great Repeal Act.

Elsewhere a who’s who of the right of the Tory Party – 60 MPs – back a call to leave the Single Market and the Customs Union, whilst Hammond regards himself as the last voice of sanity in the Cabinet over the realistic challenges of Brexit.

Hammond is to deliver his Autumn Statement this week, which looks set to include tax breaks to those earning over £43,000 which Shadow Chancellor McDonnell agrees with. McDonnell of course has been doing a lot of agreeing with the government lately. Austerity looks unlikely to end. The NHS seems likely to as well.

Work and Pensions Secretary, Damien Green has been wetting his pants at the exciting opportunity to expand the gig economy. The growth of which I think few will argue has been a hugely contributory factor to feelings that drove the Leave vote. More Tory MPs have rebelled on cuts to disability benefits calling them cruel.

Liz Truss has had a riot from prisoners and a revolt from the prison staff in addition to her problems

Amber Rudd has been forced to admit there are secret files on the miners’ strike and Orgreave clashes which she did not take into consideration whilst making the Orgreave decision. Is that the faint whiff of a cover up? She has also had the largest victims charity withdraw its support from the child abuse inquiry initiated by May.

Arron Banks has a plan to ‘Drain the Swamp’ of British politics from corruption. This seems to ignore the incredible antics of Liam Fox and instead focus on some of the most pro-remain voices of Clegg, Soubry and Lammy. This happens just as UKIP have been accused in a EU audit, which Farage does not think are carried out frequency enough, that it has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds improperly and may have to refund this. This is unfair. Apparently. In other UKIP’s news, the likely leader, Paul Nuttall, has said on the day that Aleppo’s last hospital was destroyed that he thinks Putin is behaving appropriately in Syria. Post-Truth indeed.

What we need is accountability for the national interest. Not any of this shit of blaming liberalism for the party political self interest of the last 40 years.

In light relief, Ed Balls might be popular at dancing but when it comes to leader of Labour he polls even worse than Corbyn. A fate only shared by Tony Blair. So it could be worse…

Anyway, I know there are few heads going down here, so I’m going to leave you with a link to a quote from Vaclav Havel:
www.indexoncensorship.org/2011/12/vacla-havel-index-on-censorship-ludvik-vakulik/
Vaclav Havel: "We became dissidents without actually knowing how"

Allo political leaders should condemn hate crime in the strongest possible terms. In this it suggests that 'extra money had been allocated to tackle hate crime', but that's invisible. TM should stand up and say that it's illegal, wrong, anti-patriotic and that perpetrators will be hunted down and punished. Also that ALL citizens are equal and deserve respect.
I'm disturbed by their silence on this.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38120596

TM should stand up and say that it's illegal, wrong, anti-patriotic and that perpetrators will be hunted down and punished.

Yes, but she won't. She appears to have bought a racist agenda wholesale. When the Mail printed its anti-judge tirade, she only wittered on about have a free press - she could have laced her comments with some more about not inciting violence or hatred towards other groups, but she chose not to.

thanks for the posts, interesting stuff.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38120596
ECHR had to intervene to remind this place to uphold rule of law on racism.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/26/jewish-students-accuse-cambridge-hushing-anti-semitic-attack/
And how it affects a university.

One thing highlighted for me:

I originally received a link to the historian's Twitter post, which was without caption. I checked him out and his 1930s picture. The evidence for both was of a high standard.

When I later received the picture with wrong caption, I'd remembered I'd checked out the original, but I forgot it had no caption.

As a scientisit, when I professionallyreview / assess a scientific paper, I've never seen later references to it being distorted (my field is very dry, so left / right have no interest).
So I only review the original scientific paper wrt its technical accuracy and the probity of its authors.

What I've learned:
for anything political, it's necessary to check any subsequent reference as vigorously as the original.

Politics has totally different ethics and practice to science.

Politics has totally different ethics and practice to science.

I don't think Twitter has many ethical guidelines about science or politics.

See, NF has no answer for some of this caller's furious questions and attacks when he was on LBC recently:

www.lbc.co.uk/radio/special-shows/phone-farage/enraged-caller-nigel-farage-hated-trump-brexit/

NF also ignores Trump's random tweets.

The addresses to the nation were written by somebody else.

The far right base isn't tiny: apart from those 25k people, there would be others who didn't twitter.

We don't know that 25k people were involved - only that 25k accounts we're involved.

I read a very interesting article about Ben Shapiro the other day - the Jewish conservative writer who resigned from Breitbart over their failure to support the journalist who was assaulted by Trump's campaign manager. He received lots of anti-Semitic abuse from the alt-nazis as a result but believes that this came from quite a small number of very noisy individuals.

One underestimates the alt-nazi movement at one's peril, but the one thing that can probably be said is that they punch above their weight and are probably relatively few in number. The UKIP demo the other day (which attracted about 100 people) and the Supreme Court one that was called off because so few kippers are interested that they feared it would mainly be attended by a handful of skinheads provide some evidence for this being true in the UK too.

www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/gist/2016/11/ben_shapiro_on_steve_bannon_the_alt_right_and_why_the_left_needs_to_turn.html

I think this article sums up what can be expected from a Trump presidency, including any trade deal with the U.K.

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/nov/27/architecture-donald-trump-tower-president-elect

He is 70. This is how he has operated all his life. He isn't going to change now. The only difference is that the older it gets, the more likely that he will be able to escape the consequences of his actions.

Hope you're right Mistigri on the disparate nature of extreme right.
Nick Cohen's piece on the changing face of conservatism and republicanism.
“The people” are not allowed second thoughts. Even if inflation is rising and living standards falling in 2018, “the people” cannot change their mind. The old joke wags have made about the Nazis, Hamas and every other dictatorship that came to power by winning an election, applies to the Brexiteers: “You can only vote for them once^.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/27/what-has-become-of-conservatism-trump-farage-le-pen-brexit
The next election could be the last; even if UKIP has destroyed itself, it all depends on what the conservative party has become by then .

Lord Kerr's speech at the LSE is depressing, but sounds far too believable www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/27/chance-orderly-brexit-within-two-years-less-than-50-percent-lord-kerr Some extracts:

The government has a less than 50% chance of securing an orderly exit from the European Union within two years and will potentially have to accept a phased departure lasting much longer, prompting “a decade of uncertainty”, Lord Kerr, Britain’s most experienced EU negotiator, has said.

Predicting a crunch point in the UK-EU talks of autumn 2018, he said the government was likely to table proposals next spring saying that would be immediately rejected, leading to “an extremely nasty bout of xenophobia in the Daily Mail and Sun in the summer, far worse than the recent attacks on the judges as enemies of the people”. - This sounds really scary. I have actually asked DH to look for a job abroad now.

In a frank speech at the London School of Economics, he said there was a growing chance that the UK and EU heads of state would not reach an agreement. Kerr claimed “the fog in the channel is getting thicker all the time”, adding even if an agreement was reached by spring 2019 there was a chance “a demob happy European parliament” in its final months before elections in 2019 would refuse to ratify the deal. He put the chances of a deal within two years as now lower than 50%.

Kerr said: “In my view as an ex-negotiator, interim agreements are only feasible when you have a permanent agreement. The interim agreement covers a gap before the permanent agreement comes into force and while the ratification process takes place. “No one concedes something in an interim agreement that they would not be prepared to concede for a permanent agreement...

“The number of us in parliament who will have the guts to vote against triggering article 50 is very very small. There is Ken Clarke and there is probably someone else.,” he said. That someone else is Caroline Lucas, we know.

But Mrs May’s absolute rejection of any role for the European court of justice in Britain was the single most damaging issue. Most people in Brussels think that rules out anything but a hard Brexit because, ‘how can you play if you will not accept the referee’s decision?’”

But he insisted if May made a broad statement soon setting out her willingness to cooperate on foreign policy defence and security, she could change the mood in the EU. He insisted there was a deal to be negotiated on free movement. “Most people in Brussels think there is a doable deal on free movement of persons that they would be pretend to dislike intensely and under the table quite a few people would be clapping their hands,” he said.

Kerr said an association agreement with the EU, similar to the one negotiated with Ukraine, was the best option.

Sketching out a slim prospect that the UK could eventually remain in the EU, Kerr said: “It is not inconceivable by 2019 the economic effects of act of self-harm will start to become clear, and we might think we may be better off to stay in. We would know by then what sort of treaty could be agreed with the 27 other EU member states, and, I promise you this, it will not be as described by Boris Johnson – that you can have your cake and eat it.”

“The British public might think ‘we were misled – inflation is rising, unemployment is rising, inward investment has slowed to a trickle – maybe this is all great mistake’”. He said he was clear as author of article 50 that if the UK “came to its senses”, it could withdraw its notice to leave the EU.

But he said he could not see the political circumstance in which this could occur since any election would focus on Jeremy Corbyn who he did not believe could win. He said: “The nation will not vote for Mr Corbyn as PM and the arguments about European policy would be lost in the woods.” - The same as the referendum.

I realise the thread title concerns Westminster but it is very curious that what is happening in Europe and the EU and the potential ramifications of those, and how they impact the UK, is never - or hardly ever - discussed here. Is there any acknowledgement amongst Remainers that the project is in a parlous state, politically, economically, socially? That what exists now is different to that at the referendum and by the end of next year it may not exist at all?

by the end of next year it may not exist at all?

Why do you think that?

There are risks to the EU, but a sudden collapse is very unlikely.

Bored The thread contains several posters living in / hailing from various member states, so yes, we often discuss what is going on in the EU. It is such a fast-moving discussion that individual topics are easy to miss.

Everyone in Europe acknowledges that there are aspects of the EU that could be improved --as there are in the UK and the relations between its nations, as there are in the WTO, or any political or economic union. But you are mistaken if you think that anyone except a very small minority of Europeans would like the EU to collapse, those who do belong to either the extreme right or the extreme left. Many Europeans find at least enough value in the EU to want it's survival and most value it highly at the same time as wanting areas to improve. The only sources that talk about the collapse of the EU are extreme right wing politicians and press, and the UK is over represented in this area.

Also what the European press reports about EU policy on a daily basis is very little to do with Brexit and a lot to do with policy such as environmental protection and worker's right among other things.

YY to what jaws says. Lots of discussion about challenges and problems but rarely about ending it, other than in UK press and among extreme right. I'm just watching the French right elect their presidential candidate (Fillon) who is going to be the front runner and there is not a peep about the EU, that is only Le Penn's issue. Despite her U.K. coverage, it is highly unlikely she will win more than her 30% core vote in the second round.

And in Ireland, a country the U.K. is royally shafting with Brexit, I don't know of any serious discussion about the end of the EU although it's looking at a return to bad times thanks to our neighbours.

My French neighbours put Brexit and Trump in the same category of craziness and the view from Europe that I hear is incredulity at Brexit and the general total lack of any clue coming from the British government. A cautionary tale for the rest of us, not an inspiration.

News just breaking is that Fillon has just knocked Juppé out of the race in the French Presididential elections.

Just off to read Lord Kerr's article in full - I hope he is being pessimistic.

Perhaps many would hope for the political endurance of the project. But the economic difficulties will affect views. I think the devaluation of the euro has begun and how much more qe can countries take? There are rumblings in Germany and Merkel is talking of mass repatriation and referencing closing external borders with non schengen counties. Turkey is making noises and remember Germanys gas comes via there. Italy is just about bust, Greece is to all extents and purposes. France is a tinder keg.

Yes, enormous challenges that the EU needs to tackle as a block, working together. The problems are to a large extent common ones. And isn't sterling the currency with the biggest issues at the moment?

A cautionary tale for the rest of us, not an inspiration that's exactly how it's seen. Among my many family, friends and acquaintances in my own European country and others, I know only one person who talks about the collapse of the EU and a new world order, a relative of a family member who is seen as a nutter. Quickly search "end of the EU" in European search engines, google.it, google.fr, google.es, Tec (original language) and you will find neo nazi/New age/ end of the world type pages. Google.uk will show hundreds of articles by the Express, Mail, etc.

bored unless you spend a lot of time in those places and can read the local press in the original language, you're basing your opinions on hearsay and spin.

I can read French fluently and read the serious French press regularly. UK press reports of French news, politics and opinion are usually either plan wrong (mistranslation, misunderstanding due to cultural differences) or grossly distorted for political reasons.

Well, time will tell.

Trump is nuts. He is complaining about the vote being checked, but then claiming that he won the popular vote because millions of people voted illegally.

He claims that he could have won the popular vote, but chose strategically to focus on the electoral college... however normally presidents win both.

Did he win the popular vote or not? Is voting rigged or not?

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/27/donald-trump-scam-recount-jill-stein-hillary-clinton