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.

Aren't those by election results - to some degree - the LDs regaining a foothold in their traditional westcounttry seats?

Don't know about the constituency won by the independent: was it on a single issue ticket, does anyone know?

missmoon I was not in any way arguing that what ultimately happened in Tiannanmen was not a massacre and a tragedy. As I said once blue collar workers started to flood into the square in frustration with the effects of inflation the stage was set for the horror that unfolded because the leadership could not allow what was up until that point a legitimate airing of ideas by the literati become an actual protest by the people.

What I was saying was that the western press coverage of it as a "democracy" movement was wide of the mark and more about catering to a western perspective than what actually was going on. As well as Deng and other Chinese leaders coming down to the square to listen, the elite Beijing People's army soldiers were also listening and refused point blank, officers and soldiers alike, to take get involved in the crackdown. Instead peasant soldiers were brought down from the north and not only given orders to shoot, but drugs to ensure they carried them out. Hence the indiscriminate shooting outside the square where most of the deaths occurred.

As well as the western press's version of what happened, there was also the government version fed to the Chinese people. However one irony is that t plenty of the western and Chinese academics trying to shape current academic analysis of what really happened were actually there in 1989, either as Chinese students or western students there for study.

Olenna no, not all of them; some of those seats have rarely been LD in the past.

I'm inclined to think that none of these council elections is significant individually, because seats are won with very small numbers of voters. But there have been enough post-brexit elections now for me to believe that we are seeing a trend towards the LDs: the election watch accounts on Twitter have been sharing a bar chart of gains and losses by party and the evidence in favour of a real shift is becoming rather compelling.

Well I suppose if Remain is your priority the LDs are the go-to party. The Cons have been taken over by the hard brexiteers whilst Labour doesn't appear to have found a position on this. The barrier they have to overcome is that they have an image of having sold out in the coalition, and turned out to be further to the right than people thought they were... I actually switched my support from LD to Lab but am wavering again. The thing is I don't think the Stop Brexit position has any credibility, but nuanced messages are hard to sell in an election so perhaps that's why they've gone for that rather than a 'let's not throw our country off a cliff while leaving the EU' approach, presumably because that's hard to differentiate from 'red white and blue Brexit'.

I imagine there are now a lot of voters like me, who will not support any party which does not have a strong position on remaining in the EU or the EEA.

Won't ever vote for a party that chases the Ukip vote. Cannot see myself ever putting a cross next to Labour again. If I had any doubts, Andy Burnham and Unite have finished them off over the last week or so.

Another perspective -
Der Spiegel analysis of why Brexit happened

• for those left behind, it is Cold Britannia rather than Cool Britannia

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/united-kingdom-and-brexit-searching-for-the-true-britain-a-1116325.html

"Fault lines have appeared in British society that are larger and more extreme than elsewhere.

The gap between the rich and poor is greater here than in almost any other country in the EU and nowhere else do billionaires and the destitute live so closely together."

"The British elite is different from the leadership classes in other countries in that it has largely been left alone.
For centuries, there have been no violent uprisings against the elite of the kind seen in France and Germany.
And in Britain, the elite continues to recruit from just a few institutions, including Eton and the universites of Oxford and Cambridge"

"Those who aren't members of this club are forced to struggle, and for many ....
the UK is a gray, hyper-capitalist oligarchy in which anyone with lots of money or a famous last name can rise up the ladder.
^Cold Britannia."

However, noone sensible thinks that the EU should be complacent:
the UK is a dire warning about what could eventually happen in other countries too, if the losers in globalisation are not helped more.

The numbers of the losers are increasing, as jobs further and further up the skills scale are being outsourced to populous, rapidly developing countries.

China and India produced nearly 30% of global graduates in 2010, which is expected to rise to 40% by 2020

imo, the lower % of German & French graduates hasn't hurt their prosperity, because they haven't "flooded the market" in their respective countries, i.e. a degree there is a much clearer economic advantage (and also graduates start with no / much lower debt than in the UK)

I always expected that the law of supply & demand would mean that hugely increasing the number of graduates in the Uk would reduce the competitive advantage a degree has in the UK
AND that they also couldn't compete with the much cheaper graduates from China & India - that's really what the Blair government didn't realistically assess, wrt competing globally.

"Those who aren't members of this club are forced to struggle, and for many ....
the UK is a gray, hyper-capitalist oligarchy in which anyone with lots of money or a famous last name can rise up the ladder.

Yep I agree with that. It took me years to realise that, coming with my own preconception from a country where the leardership isn't restricted to a small number of people and handed down generations.

@rondo you said above Instead peasant soldiers were brought down from the north and not only given orders to shoot, but drugs to ensure they carried them out

What kind of drugs do that? Feel a bit uninformed: I haven't come across this before.

DH and I were facepalming watching the news this morning about the Lords report on fishing. Stating the obvious 6 months later is not helpful and makes me wonder just how many people really failed to even think about the impact

What do we do then re graduates? Deny people the right to education?

Cannot see myself ever putting a cross next to Labour again. If I had any doubts, Andy Burnham and Unite have finished them off over the last week or so.

I think I am being persuaded back to Labour because of them and others too.
They are finally doing what Labour have not done for too long - they're championing and backing up the rights of the workers.

What do we do then re graduates? Deny people the right to education?

There is more to education than just churning out graduates with increasingly meaningless degrees.

Far better to give people meaningful education, and have work/skills based formal recognition.

No you give them better education.
Better education doesn't mean getting a degree or master etc... it means getting a diploma/training of some sort that is
1- relevant to the market
2- that is enabling people to be flexible (both due to the fact they are likely to have to do different jobs in their life time and because the way we work will change dramatically within their own life time)
3- has taught people to do their job well, not just 'that will do' attitude that is prevalent (see what we talked about before about the lack f productivity etc...)
4- but that might just be me, you teach them to value education for its own sake. That means you learn not pass an exam but to learn skills/knowledge. that will mean changing the whole premise of teaching in this country though, starting from primary school

The gap between the rich and poor is greater here than in almost any other country in the EU and nowhere else do billionaires and the destitute live so closely together.

I don't think billionaires and the destitute do tend to live close together, except in London, which voted remain.

Also, plenty of people voting remain live in the home counties and are comfortably off.

I agree that Eton has an abnormally high profile in Westminster. But I don't think that has much to do with being elite, as in 'the best'. Academically plenty of other schools do far better. However, compared to other countries, the UK (England?) has a tradition of distrusting people who work too hard. I don't know if concepts like being a swot or a boff or nouveau riche exist in the same way elsewhere. It's as though succeeding by virtue of skill and effort is cheating.

I wouldn't compare Eton to Oxford and Cambridge. Some of the colleges seem to be more accessible if you have been to Eton, but the universities perform well in national and international league tables.

'What I was saying was that the western press coverage of it as a "democracy" movement was wide of the mark and more about catering to a western perspective than what actually was going on'
Agreed whatwouldrondo A readership and electorate who read and digested media, all media, critically, with research and thought, is the worst nightmare of extremists. And is one of the reasons why I'm using this thread as an essential news source.

The events of the square were horrific, deplorable, shocking but this is what The George Washington University published on it( in a very detailed report)
The Secretary of State’s intelligence summary for the following morning (Document 13) reports that "deaths from the military assault on Tiananmen Square range from 180 to 500;
nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/#12-29
2015

Also, plenty of people voting remain leave! live in the home counties and are comfortably off.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18321548

Apparently it's not always easy to search for information about Tiananmen Square in China.

I know that you can't read the 'MSM' uncritically, and you certainly have to look for bias. However, it isn't all much of a muchness. Some countries really don't have a free press and some papers do hold their journalists to higher standards.

Castel I don't want to turn this into a total derail but there is now plenty of eyewitness evidence that there was indiscriminate shooting in the roads leading to Tiannanmen, including of people who were just looking out from their flats, and that the surrounding hospitals handled many more casualties including fatalities than have ever entered any records. Those figures may be correct in terms of what happened in the square but it was the roads around that were the real killing fields. Also absent from the western Press version is the fact that marches were taking place in other cities, half a million marched in Shanghai, where there were further casualties, and in Chengdu, deaths. This article by Marie Claire Bergere was the first to try and arrive at a more nuanced understanding of what actually happened in the historical and cultural context of China and is the basis of most academic thinking now. As she says there was a western perception of the events that focused on images of a lone man confronting a tank and students gathered around what looked like a Statue of Liberty that were emblematic of a thwarted "democracy" movement and a Chinese government version that focused on thugs starting a counter revolutionary movement in league with the west that was quelled by the PLA in a restrained fashion, the version that was fed back to you. The truth is as always more complex and harder to interpret and not the stuff of easily digested headlines.

I hope this links to the article, not the whole book, books.google.co.uk/books?id=3atTAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA239&lpg=PA239&dq=marie+claire+bergere+tiananmen+square&source=bl&ots=68uOPLiGCI&sig=wRrQSTHmdAZYQD6h48nFMGym-Y8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjp14LlhfvQAhXFKsAKHfw7D2YQ6AEIKDAE#v=onepage&q=marie%20claire%20bergere%20tiananmen%20square&f=false

Arborea I am not sure but the use of drugs to improve the "efficiency" of soldiers is something the Americans have experimented with too. The PLA had a problem in that many of the soldiers already deployed had ended up sympathising with the protesters and joining in all the discussions that took place swapping ideas on how to achieve better government. The eyewitness accounts, and I have talked to some who were there, talk about the soldiers being out of it, inhumanly vicious and just shooting indiscriminately in every direction, including upwards which was how people in their flats came to be injured. It is a common assumption amongst those that were there.

Mango Marjories I totally agree that we need to place more attention to developing a proper recognised framework for vocational training for those who want it.

However I totally disagree with the snobbery that has emerged around university degrees in supposedly "meaningless" subjects like, and this may not be your prejudice but it is certainly a common one, media studies. Actually a media studies degree focuses on exactly the issues we are discussing here. It is far from a meaningless degree. The point of academic study is not just to give you direct vocational skills, it is also about developing your intellectual and critical thinking skills. That is why the big graduate employers do not discriminate on the basis of your degree subject (and in some cases institution). What they are interested in are those intellectual skills, the vocational, management skills they can impart through training and development. There is also a wider issue of educating people to be thoughtful and critical in the way in which they conduct their lives including as citizens, and in exercising their democratic rights.

There is also a gender issue here. Whilst the numbers going to universities have increased, by far the biggest increase has been amongst women who were massively underrepresented in universities in the days when only 10% went there. The same applies to those from poorer backgrounds. Expanding the universities has to a large extent been the result of evening out social and gender inequality rather than according to the narrative that there are now lots of Mickey Mouse degrees available to the less able....

I agree that a degree is about so much more.
What devalues 'a degree' however, is the making everything into 'a degree', or dependent on a degree.

With many degrees module based now, it would make sense to be able to gain a career based degree as an ongoing progression within the workplace, one module at a time.

For those degrees that don't lend themselves to that, then they are perfectly valid within the higher education framework as they are now.
Learning & knowledge should be something people want to do, rather than be something they feel they have to do, which is what it's turning into nowadays.

...degree does not look or sound like an actual real word to me now, as I overused it so much in that last post...!!