Westministenders. Boris we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Constitutional Crisis?

[RedToothBrush]

Its twelve days to go until the end of the HoC 2016 calendar and we can already tell that everyone is wishing it was Christmas already. Poor Theresa though, she doesn’t get to play with toys on the last day of term. Instead she has a grilling on the lack of spending on health and social care spending by a commons select committee.

Hopefully the next couple of weeks will calm down a little though as thoughts turn elsewhere.

The A50 case has come to an end. There is no way of telling which way the judges will go but the decision to appeal may yet haunt the government as it will bring the issue of devolution to a head, whether they win or lose. The ruling is due in mid January.

Win and they are going to have to amend the Devolution Acts and potentially impose Brexit on people with certain national identities who voted against it. This is profoundly undemocratic and a betrayal of the principles of Devolution and the expectations of the will of the people.
Lose and they could face a full blown constitutional crisis, with NI or Scotland or both having a veto over Brexit, and the government effectively unable to trigger a50 in line with our constitutional requirement. Which is again, potentially profoundly undemocratic and against the referendum and the expectations of the will of the people.

It was a scenario that predictable and avoidable at several junctions yet the government under Cameron and May ploughed on regardless. It a scenario that we are now locked into, due to deciding to use the courts rather than just go through parliament.

It could also massively restrict the power of the executive under the Royal Prerogative. Ironically this is something that David Davis has campaigned for, for years so I guess he gets a victory however the decision goes.
So the chances of some kind of crisis with regard to our constitutional makeup and the union seem inevitable in the new year.

The government despite a defeat in Richmond Park continues to lean right and characterise anyone with concerns as unpatriotic or not honourable. This is the last resort of the desperate.

They have however, conceded to Labour that they will publish a report on their Brexit plans before a50 is triggered. In return Labour have promised that they will let a50 be triggered by the end of March. Is this a good thing? It remains to be seen. In some ways this is a blinder for Labour.

They are pro-Brexit but anti-lack of plan in theory. This only works if the plan actually has substance. If there is no substance in the plan and its nothing more than empty words then they face having to go back on a commons vote committing them to a deal with the Conservatives. It could therefore be a trap for them. It marginalises the none English Nationalist voices too. Voices that are important and deserve to be heard. Voices that if they are not listened to, will have consequences.

What will the Sleaford and North Hykenham (yep again) by election bring?

A vote of confidence in the government, a new ever growing and rising fear of UKIP or something else. How will this colour the start to the New Year?

I don’t know. 2016 has apparently been the year of gin as people turn to the drink to cope. Everything is now Brexitty and Red, White and Blue.
But whose’s? Britain’s? The USA’s? Russia’s? Or France’s?

We look forward to, or more to the point we fear what 2017 could bring. A feeling we have not felt to this degree in many years. A General Election with a UKIP breakthrough. The end of peace in NI. A repeat of the age old betrayal of Scotland’s by the English. The Welsh damned to irrelevance and marginalisation. Brexit vettoed and the subsequent political fallout. The end of the NHS. A bonfire of rights. A new Italian PM and possibly new Eurozone economic crisis. Fillon or Le Pen and at last a real victory for the far right in Europe. The chance of Merkel’s Last Stand. Putin’s partnership with Assad and a new genocide we are powerless to stop. Erdogan pulling the plug on the EU door and unleashing a new wave of refugees onto European shores. The horror of ISIS both within the West and within the Middle East. Trump’s neo-fascism and rise of a New World Order. There is something in there for everyone to dread.

Which will it be? Probably something we have not yet foreseen such are these times.

Act 2 of Brexit in Westminstenders land is bound to be just as dramatic and of course, we leave 2016 in true soap fashion on a real cliff hanger.

All the more reason to enjoy the holiday period and break whatever your politics.

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/brexit/russian-hackers-probably-swayed-brexit-vote/ar-AAlvEjf?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=mailsignout
? or just click bait malarkey, who knows now.

If Donald Trump was the Mayor of Trumpton

Thankyou Red for all your posts. I've found this thread a lifeline these last months, for renewing my hope when I'd lost it.
I think we do have to play the long game. I do believe sense will prevail eventually and good will come. And what goes around comes around.
We just need to keep believing it. Keep aware, keep talking and keep listening.
I have desperate days, but they do go away again.

I have a real feeling that whatever form of Brexit happens, very few will be satisfied with the outcome. This includes the 16 Million who don't want Brexit at all, and a significant number of the 17 million who do.

I would love to be a historian in a 100 years time trying to analyse what happened and why. A weak Prime Minister had a referendum, to appease a small minority of his party, with no provision as to what to do with the result. He resigned, to be followed by another PM who talked in soundbites, (which will be called something else then) but also didn't have a clue what to do. The historians will be scratching their heads in incredulity.

Hester

Thanks Castel.
Did anyone see this interview with Dominic Grieve? He was saying that the only thing that will reverse Brexit (and stop Remainer MPs voting for it) is a demonstrable change in public opinion. He said it so overtly and clearly, twice, that it almost felt like a rallying call. 'Get on to your MPs now!'
Things are progressing so slowly, opinion is changing; maybe the deal will not be so 'Hard'.

www.open-britain.co.uk/dominic_grieve_debate_over_brexit_must_not_be_closed_down

Surprising source for this article:

www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-4020214/Half-UK-households-worried-Brexit-survey.html

It even quotes the Guardian! 58% concerned about food prices, 47% up from September's 39% worried about leaving EU. Interesting.

Perhaps when the Telegraph tells it, people will listen. Cambodia (my DD tells me that few of their generation even know of the genocide, let alone that an entire nation lost a generation of those who had any sort of skills to build civilised society to the extent that a good proportion of those even able to move into government are still complicit ), Rwanda ..... now Aleppo www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/13/watching-aleppo-burn-real-time-just-like-bosnia-rwanda-did-nothing/

re foreign languages being a barrier to British people moving abroad:
It depends.
If you are a skilled professional, not customer-facing - e.g umpteen branches of science, IT development, higher reaches of law, banking - it may well not be a problem.

E.g. my first contract working on the continent was in Germany (I've a STEM Phd, in a field much in demand)
The only 3 German words I knew were: Ja, nein, Schweinhund - and I never used #3 !
No problem being a monolingual Brit

Same whenever I worked, in Germany or Sweden especially:
English is the language of science, so discussions and reports etc were all English.
Every job had colleagues from inside and outside the EU, especially from India, also Korea

btw, Brexit won't affect the ability of mobile mc professionals with the right skills to work in the EU.
Anyone hoping for equality of misery will be disappointed.

I was impressed by how clearly the various Brexit trade options were detailled in the HoL briefing, with tradeoffs, transitional arrangement, sequencing of negotiations:

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201617/ldselect/ldeucom/72/7211.htm#_idTextAnchor124

I wonder if the HoC have a similar document of their own, or if they peek at the HoL

As a wise man once sung, I really don't know what I'm doing here, I really think I should've gone to bed tonight...

Melassa I ventured into the crowd funding one and was overwhelmed at the angry exclamation marks. And the non facts, and the refusal to accept anything that doesn't fit into their narrative, however much actual evidence you give them. Some people are really bitter and there is a lot of if I can't have then I don't want you to either.

Peregrina I have a real feeling that whatever form of Brexit happens, very few will be satisfied with the outcome. This includes the 16 Million who don't want Brexit at all, and a significant number of the 17 million who do.

BigChocFrenzy btw, Brexit won't affect the ability of mobile mc professionals with the right skills to work in the EU. Anyone hoping for equality of misery will be disappointed.

How do we get to the point where we have equality of opportunity? Handing absolute power to the Tories would seem like a good place to start, since at least we know that they have the Will of the People behind them.

The whole false narrative thing is not new, I think. Becoming politically aware in the late 80's I was vaguely aware that a lot of stuff with unions and the Labour party happened in the 70's. I had heard stories about the electricity supply being shut off and bodies piling up in the streets due to industrial action, and this being the reason why the Labour Party could never again be trusted with government. Except the first part of this (the three day week) happened under a Conservative government, something I only discovered fairly recently, because no-one had ever bothered to point that out to me. Now, things being what they are, I suspect things are more complicated than that, and you can't blame whoever happens to be in power at the time for the crises that befall them, but if you're going to do that you could at least do it consistently.

One thing you will realise if I continue to post is that I never knowingly make a point.

It has come from the US and is seen as a way to evaluate if the teachings are good. Except that we all know that students will prefer easy work where they have little thinking to do rather than the hard ones where you need to put a lot of effort in.

Student evaluation as a means of assessing teaching comes from the US, but ime the factors going into the evaluation are not necessarily those stated. There is very much an 'academic jock' culture in the top few tiers of American universities. Students have to work incredibly hard in high school, put in countless hours in extra curricular activities and produce stellar personal statements and references from teachers in order to get into the top 100 or so American universities. The culture in those universities is extreme competition to do the most work, the best work, take the most difficult classes. The GPA system means that you are only as good as your last essay. Most students hold down a menial job while in university and have thousands of dollars in loans to pay off when they graduate no matter how much or little they end up making in salary - they appreciate the perception among employers that their university turns out graduates who are well worth hiring thanks to the rigour of their courses.

Many trends drift east across the Atlantic and are adopted without due regard to the many nuances that characterise them in their native environment. Institutions and practices can only very rarely be plucked out of one culture and plopped down intact into another. There are many other factors taken into account when ranking American universities - size of endowment, number of graduates who go on to professional schools (medicine, veterinary, law, pharmacy, etc) and into postgrad studies, number who leave with a job offer, graduation rate (equals dropout rate if you look at the other side of the coin - high dropout rate = low quality university) etc.

American universities welcome foreign students with open arms and charge them the full whack. This includes state universities. Diversity of enrolment is touted as a major plus in brochures.

(And prospective students whose first language is not English have to pass an English proficiency test. There is nothing to stop them speaking with compatriots in their own language.)

Mistigri I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would consider this an adequate reason for inflicting serious economic self-damage - discouraging students is probably one of the single most damaging brexit-inspired policies
Amen to that. Links to foreign alumni constitute a major source of soft power.

My own Irish university takes a completely different tack and I have no reason to believe Irish universities in general are any different.

re foreign languages being a barrier to British people moving abroad:
It depends.
If you are a skilled professional, not customer-facing - e.g umpteen branches of science, IT development, higher reaches of law, banking - it may well not be a problem.

In industry it's a barrier, even in roles occupied by scientists. The engineers that my company has working at major clients in Europe have to be fluent in the customer's language, as do the technical sales people. Two thirds of the department I work in (economics/ forecasting/ strategic planning) is bilingual or trilingual.

Less of an issue in academia, where in top universities and research establishments english is often the language of both teaching and research, and in finance/ banking where there is often an expat bubble effect. But monolingual expats often struggle even when educated and well supported by their employer (we see this all the time on the support group I help run: people who are incapable of getting the simplest administrative or domestic issue settled. And they sometimes run into legal issues eg I know one who got taken to the cleaners at an employment tribunal by someone he employed in a personal capacity).

Basically, moving abroad is not that simple. Many people fail at it even when moving somewhere where they have automatic rights (like in Europe). Many return within two years; those who don't, often don't return because they are basically stuck - kids at critical stages in education, can't afford property in their birth nation (both these apply to us and we are objectively rather well off: I couldn't run to the UK even if I wanted to, because housing is cambridge is out of my reach and I have two children in or about to start senior high school.

Why we want to make it so much harder is beyond me. The difficulty of moving abroad already means that the vast majority of immigrants fall into one of three categories: strivers, the very rich, and those with no choice (eg refugees, or the dependents of immigrants).

"couldn't return to the UK" (not "run")

Oh joy, it looks like those acquired rights aren't quite so castiron after all:

www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/14/eu-citizens-collect-proof-of-living-in-uk-helena-kenney-qc-lords-brexit-reports

Its [the House of Lords] report also concludes that international law may not provide much reassurance for EU citizens. “The evidence we received makes very clear that the doctrine of acquired rights under public international law will provide little, if any, effective protection for former EU rights once the UK withdraws from the EU,” it says.

The article draws attention to a number of complex issues. A lot of my colleagues are EU nationals, and a number of them have started families here. The consequence of this is that in a number of cases the parents and children are of different nationalities, and it sounds like things could get very difficult indeed for such people.

Taking this alongside the restrictions on student visas, it looks like this government wants to raze our higher education system (and with it, our entire knowledge economy) to the ground - a fair proportion of (top notch) university staff hail from the EU.

On the subject of universities I worry about the current focus on 'student satisfaction'. Not because students don't deserve to be satisfied - they should - or because teaching is already uniformly excellent across the board - it isn't - but because no-one has yet come up with a good way to measure the quality of the teaching. The National Student Survey, which seems to be one of the favoured instruments, has one very obvious flaw: students by definition have nothing to compare their experience against. It would be like trusting a review of a restaurant from someone who has only ever eaten out once in their life.

I agree with you re the type of immigrants.
I would just make the difference within the 'strivers' between those who know they won't stay long (so don't always bother to learn the language and integrate) and those whose aim is to settle there.
The first group is the group you really notice IMO because they do keep so many of their old habits that it's Impossible to miss. Whether it's not learning to speak the language or other stuff. I'm thinking about both immigrants in the UK who can't speak a word of English, living between themselves etc... and British people abroad who do exactely the same thing and Lament because they can't find their 'Yorkshire tea'

Most immigrants I know are actually very settled and not 'forced' to stay though. They are often married with someone in the country too.
And the teenage years where moving schooling system might be harder is only that. A few years.
There is a risk otherwise to think that most people who immigrate stay because they don't have the choice which is a very negative way of looking at things.

Eeeee that's why most eu citizens I know have been asking for the 'permanent residence card' and are then asking for the British citizenship, that they never bothered to ask for before because there was no need.

The VERY big problem there is that there are so many applications of this permanent residence card that the government can't cope with it. Last time I heard, they had more than 100 years worth of work. And that was end of August. Who knows what it is now.

Assuming that you could actually stay in the country after the UK will be out of the EU is foolish IMO.

Esp with TM who is known to be quite heartless on that subject. And is known to have either destroyed families or pushed British citizens to live abroad just to be able to stay with their family (children, spouse/partner)

Thanks everyone. I think yesterday I felt like I was being sucked into a general feeling of utter hopelessness. I don't like posting here, when I feel like that. I don't think its generally productive. I am going to take it easy for a couple of days.

However Guy Verhofstadt has posted something curious on FB this morning and I thought it worth sharing thoughts on this:

www.facebook.com/GuyVerhofstadt/

Its the video with the comment
If the government leaders do not take the European Parliament's role seriously, we'll negotiate directly with the British. If that's what they want, they'll get it. Watch my speech here.

For the first 4mins 20 he talks about Syria. Then he starts to talk about Brexit and how European Governments don't seem to be taking it seriously. I don't get what he's saying properly, but the point is he is saying that if they don't act in a certain way the European Commission will handle the negotiations by themselves on behalf of the European Parliament.

As I say, I don't quite get what he's driving at properly, but it would be important for the British Government and probably what May would prefer.

He sounded frustrated and generally annoyed with the parliament. It also it struck me watching the first part of the video that he sounded scared. He was going on about what the EU can do to help in Syria and also talked about defence capability. He called for a new Defence Union.

There is one scenario in which there is potential for the UK to generally say, that the EU needs us more than we need them, and that's when it comes down to defence. We certainly will not agree to an EU army, but we are critical to European defence and Europe may well be critical to ours.

Its also one of the very few things where 'not revealing your hand' might be a legitimate argument.

I don't know, but the way things are shifting and pressures that are mounting on all parties, this could come into play more in the next 18months or so.

That said, I do now wonder with the crisis in Syria whether things would be headed in this direction regardless of Brexit anyway. Turkey yet have a role to play I feel. If they want to screw with Germany and the elections there, their best move would be to pull the plug on the refugee deal at a critical time for maximum impact sometime a couple of months before the German election.

I find the whole situation deeply troubling, and it doesn't help my anxiety in the slightest.

Misti Marjorie It will not just be an EU issue if we jump off that cliff. If we are going to develop closer trading relationships with the rest of the world we are going to need even more people to go and do business, work and live even in countries where the language and culture are completely alien, where it is even impossible to read road signs if you do not understand Chinese characters or Cyrillic script, let alone build business relationships with people with entirely different cultural values. In Europe those moving around have the benefit of a basic knowledge of the culture and hopefully of how to go about learning the language. People do do it, and you can do it in an expat bubble, but not if you want to become truly effective, how many people do we have willing to do that?

Red I share your worry.

I am worried because Theresa May's only agenda seems to be to curb immigration and beyond that she has no policy whatever. At least Phillip Hammond seems to be talking some sense.

The student satisfaction survey is a blunt instrument. My most recent uni does not do well on it. It is not because of the teaching. That is amazing, inspiring and world class. It is an amazing place that gives its students the knowledge and skills about important parts of the world that enable them to make a real difference, knowledge and skills that are going to be all the more important given the future world students will emerge we into.

However there are 23 questions on the survey and however much you have loved the teaching and what you have learnt, and been equipped to go out in the world and make a difference, the administration is really really dire, it drives you nuts, and the buildings and facilities are third world.

So I am very worried that it is going to be graded bronze and lose the ability to recruit the overseas students that are not just a vital to it's finances but also it's ethos and culture. It has already lost world leading EU academics, and students both from overseas, and from ethnic minorities here, are reporting record levels of racial abuse. That is already causing damage.

I suspect that is the source of LSE and KCL's issues as well.

My first university scores very highly but that is because it has become a corporate behemoth, many times the size it was when I was there and it manages every aspect of those 23 questions. It even has a nightclub on campus to make up for the dullness of it's city. It is a good business but is it as effective in actually teaching?