Westministers: Boris and May give us the Brexit Leeming Plan.

[RedToothBrush]

Theresa May has made a speech.

It’s a wish list for hard core Brexiteers. It’s a large corporate executive’s wet dream for exploitation.

Even requests for a white paper as recommended by the Brexit Committee have been ignored. Thus meaning there is no chance for proper scrutiny. Plus whilst on the one hand parliament have been told they will have a vote on the end deal, this is merely slight of hand, with Davis stating that if parliament vote against this, then we will leave the EU without a deal in a chaotic exit. Thus making the vote an exercise with a gun to parliament's head.

Workers Rights and the Welfare State die with Brexit. Even the precious NHS. Especially the precious NHS once its been stole off to the highest American bidder.

May is being lobbied by her hard right and to save her next she listens only to them. She has no interest in listening to anyone else. The demographic and voting patterns favour her to head this direction. There is nothing to be gained for her personally by doing anything else.

She is already laughing her head off in glee at the collapse of the NI assembly. It plays right to her agenda.

Under the wheels of the bus go the JAMs, under go the disenfranchised who rarely vote but came out in force for the referendum, under go single mothers, under go the disabled, under go those with mental health concerns who struggle with already bureaucratic systems set up to ‘catch them out’, under go the EU immigrants especially those who have families here and may not have equal rights in future, under go British Citizens living abroad who might find themselves without healthcare or pensions, under go our Human Rights and any chance of challenging the state’s authority and interference in our every day lives, under go small business who will drown in red tape, under go Scotland and NI.

Yet this is ‘for the children’ or ‘the grandchildren’. Its spineless and cynical and offers nothing for those currently able to vote but under the age of 40. Won't you think of the children? Its fine if you are already retired and have a nice little pension isn't it?

The National Interest? This is a foreign concept. Probably an EU one.

The Baby Boomers are net beneficiaries of the welfare state. The young are unlikely to have a welfare state in a few years and are already net contributors. They have now been robbed of the choice over their future and in patronising tones effectively told they are irrelevant.

And of course Uncle Donald is a fan. You can almost see his vampire fangs reading to get his teeth into the UK and suck the life blood out of it.

It is a horror show.

Its all about selling Theresa May to the Express and the Mail and they love it. Her speech is to set the scene of how committed she is and to lay the blame at anyone who challenges her. It attacks the EU and paints them as the aggressor who are there to prevent poor little Britain from getting what it wants. If Brexit goes wrong, it was all an anti-British plot. Not a collective self inflicted brain haemorrhage. She's gone full on Farage and out Farages Farage.

This all comes perhaps a week before the Supreme Court Ruling.

Funny timing eh? No not really.

It’s a pre-emptive strike.

What on earth will they say? Will this merely allow May to dismantle our current legal system by gathering support for a General Election Manifesto that outlines its demise? Thus extending the mandate for Brexit even further. Probably.

I fear that the courts may only serve to strengthen May in the long run due to the lack of opposition and a Labour party that is imploding, with dozens of its MPs being rumoured to be looking for employment elsewhere. I fear that without a media able to effectively hold May to account in the face of her media baron supporters.

Our only hope really lies within the Conservative party itself and whether May is able to keep a lid on the various on going power struggles. The only trouble is that one of those challengers is a certain Brutus in the form of Mr Gove. I struggle to work out who would be worse; Gove or May. And of course this only highlights the issue that who else is there with in the Conservatives who isn’t a reptile? Even Arron Banks commentated that during the referendum he found Labour MPs nice people and the Conservatives unpleasant almost to a man. High praise indeed.

Meanwhile in America, NATO is obsolete and so Europe will have to consider an EU Army and Russia is firmly getting its claws in. And yeah, just Donald Trump. That Project Fear thing was just fake scaremongering wasn't it? Right? Right?

sigh

What on earth can possible stop this insanity? Not necessarily stop Brexit, but at least stop the PURE INSANITY.

Richard North was a Leaver? This is pretty damning stuff, if that's the case.

Interesting:

Whether the men in grey suits come calling, to invite Mrs May to book a trip to the Palace, remains to be seen. But every day now that she remains in No 10 will add to the growing sense of disaster.

The problem as back in the summer, is that there is no one suitable yet.

Michael Gray ‏*@GrayInGlasgow*

Northern Irish are entitled to Irish citizenship (& therefore EU citizenship) by right in the Good Friday Agreement. Square that circle...

Some are of the opinion that NI and Gibraltar are the rock on which Brexit will founder. (Not meant to be a pun about Gibraltar). I could see Spain getting particularly sticky about Gibraltar - partly because of the sense of injustice that they have been nursing for 200 years about it, and partly because of Catalonia.

Does anyone get the feeling that in the country there are a small group of ardent pro-Remainers and the same of ardent pro-leavers, but the vast majority of the population are content to just sit back with a cup of tea and assume everything will just sort itself out in the end?

Yes.

Even my aunt and uncle, both immigrants to London from different places, are determined to wait and see. Their lives could all be changed 100% by the end of 2018. Part of their lack of a sense of urgency is down to the fact that they do not want to believe that their long, productive working lives - and much time spent volunteering - and doing everything 'right' wrt my cousin's education would be rewarded by a kick in the teeth.

My mum is a lot more worried about them than they seem to be even though they live under the triple whammy of pensioned retirement, seeking to sell their house in the next five years, and my cousin their DS working in the City and possible facing relocation along with their beloved DIL and grandchildren. Oh and as an added wrinkle, neither my aunt nor my cousin's wife are entitled to the Irish citizenship my uncle and cousin can claim, until they live in Ireland for a year.

red When I first worked in Germany I knew only "ja, nein, Schweinhund"
I didn't know a soul there, whereas you have a DH for mutual support
Even being a complete duffer at languages, I've learned German over the years.

I knew even fewer words of Dutch or Swedish (i.e. none) but I managed to work briefly in each country.
In France, I had this useful repertoire:
"yes, no"
"my aunt's feather"
"the teacher is cross"

Seriously though, I've given up on England. Dumped it down the toilet and moved on.

I spent the 1960s - mid 1970s suffering frequent racial abuse at school (I'm mixed race but born British).
I'd put it out of my mind for decades
However, with the othering & hostility openly expressed against immigrants and with the agressive English nationalism suddenly rearing up again, the resentment has suddenly flooded back.
The intensity of my disgust at England in particular has surprised me, tbh.

Thank you for the Village Voice article, RTB. Aleksander Hemon is a brilliant writer.

My DD1 has already been looking at Vancouver as an alternative to the US. She is fully prepared to renounce her citizenship. She was most interested to learn her great, great grandfather was born in PEI and is investigating links to that part of our family tree to see if Canadian citizenship might be possible (I think this is a forlorn hope). Both she and DD2 have Irish passports and DD3 will apply for hers as soon as she has time to get snapshots taken.

Grace, maybe this explains it:
'What Kafka knew was that there is no reason to believe that the reality we know and count on as reliable will not suddenly and arbitrarily alter. He knew that the assumption of continuity is based on reality inertia, on the belief that everything will stay as it is simply because it's always been that way....
... my mind refused to accept the possibility that the only life and reality I had known could be so easily annihilated. I perceived and received information but could not process it and convert it into knowledge, because the mind could not accept the unimaginable, because I had no access to an alternative ontology.' (From the Village Voice article).
Even after the unthinkable happens, we still wait because as SuperMummy reminded us Armageddon didn't happen the morning after the Brexit vote. I think there is a strong human tendency to fall prey to inertia. We embrace delusions because the alternative means we must make decisions and take action.

Why is Canada different to the UK ?

Canada's main exports to the EU are pearls, precious metals, mineral products, i.e. its natural resources.
80% of Uk exports are services, not physical goods

The UK wants a lot more access to the EU market than Canada will get under CETA
e.g. passporting rights for the City, customs union, unified norms.

Trade deals between most countries (not just with the EU) typically take 5-10 years to agree.
How are UK exporters supposed to survive in the meantime ?

People keep talking about tariffs - they really aren't the worry.
What takes the time in trade deals are the incredibly complex non-tariff issues.
A deal that includes services as well as physical goods is much less common.

btw, WTO rules deal almost entirely with physical goods. So the UK won't get far trying to export services under WTO.

This has been the main worry of many Remainers: ending up with Hard Brexit and all that means for the economy.

May is saying she's prepared to make the Uk a very low tax haven for business and the super wealthy, removing many laws that protect human rights & workers' rights.

That's pointing her pistol at the population of the UK, rather than at the EU

That would effect far more than just the minority of hardcore Remainers & Leavers
That's the 90% screwed.

In fact it doesn't seem so much like a fallback plan:

The Tory right have always wanted to abolish the welfare state & the nhs since they were first created, but the party would have been wiped out if they'd ever put this in a GE manifesto
Now, they've convinced half the public that this would be standing up to the EU
If living standards fall, if the nhs is slashed and semi-privatised, they can blame the EU.

With no effective political opposition, it looks a feasible plan

It may be wrong to think May is incompetent or deluded:
she might just have totally different goals to what you think she has

As an EU citizen, Will I be able to claim my pension contributions of 12 years I worked there? What if all EU nationals claimed them once they have to leave?

Trivial in the grand scheme of things, but I personally am worried that I contributed for a long time and I might not get anything back for it when I retire, leaving me in trouble financially.

This thread is dominated by armchair warriors, who spend the day posting about how apathetic everyone is (as if posting on MN somehow made them better).

May's speech was actually pretty good (one reason why sterling rallied, along with an expectation of higher interest rates).

There seem a lot on here who feel our mode of negotiation should be begging the commission to be thrown a bone, even if we have been a naughty dog. We have teeth, both economically and militarily. Trump (no, I don't like him personally, either) has been a godsend to the uk vis-a-vis Brexit and we should leverage that advantage to the max.

It is somewhat sad that the great dream of global cooperation is moving backwards but nation states we're cheating to gain advantage for years (notably France and Germany) whilst others played nobly by the rules.

Those running real businesses are increasingly optimistic and I feel that a good Brexit is certainly possible.

And the idea of kicking current EU nationals out will never ever happen. It is a straw man argued against by desperate remainers.

Tell that to the people who've received their PTL letters from the home office

Larry Not just armchair warriors, some on this thread have been out campaigning on the streets, as well as doing everything we can to influence the democratic parliamentary process our leader is trying to circumvent.

Please give me an example of a business that is out there competing in global markets, actually selling goods and services to the rest of the world, that is optimistic about Brexit. I know of none except a handful of private bankers wringing their hands at the prospect of being a tax / money laundering haven. Business is not one huge homogenous mass. Of course there will be businesses that can spot opportunities in Brexit, there are plenty, but not enough to compensate for the damage done if May does walk away from the table because the EU will not concede the financial passport and access for the Science community and knowledge economy, and she has prioritised border control and freedom from the European courts. They have been very clear on their negotiating position on no cherry picking. The negotiating response to people who threaten to walk away is to let them.

Can you explain what you mean by dominated by armchair warriors, Larry and why the people on this thread are different from anyone else discussing on the internet or indeed, your good self?

I would add that many people find this thread a source of information and debate which is surely a good thing when there is so much evidence free facile hyperbole (and I don't include you in that) being thrown about on other threads.

That's great Larry. Thank you do much for the reassurance.

Can you help me with why my German colleague received a letter telling her to prepare to leave the UK because she didn't have the right papers if everyone will definitely be allowed to stay? If it's just administrative incompetence of course, that makes it all so much better.

Grace - I think there are a lot of people who are quietly unhappy with how things are going but don't know what to do. As I said earlier, the county council elections this spring could be very interesting.

Depressing. I think a GE will be the only way to show any real opposition. And unless JC, for whom I had high hopes in the beginning, undergoes a drastic personality change I can't see anything other than a Tory majority until at least 2025 when it will be too late to do anything about all this mess.

Corbyn is not Labour's only problem. Even with him gone they have a major identity crisis. They on the one hand have Kate Hoey who is rabidly pro leave in one of the most remain areas of the country. Then there Dennis Skinner up in Bolsever who is heavily leave but matches his constituency. He is proper old school working class labour. Then there is careerist like Andy Burnham who say what they think will get elected and lack conviction in the eyes of many and have shifted position. Then you have your Chris Bryants who are Remainers in leave areas and have utter moral conviction about what is best for their local area and want to act in good faith along those lines. And finally David Lanny who is heavily pro remain morally and is also in tune with his pro remain constituency.

How do you deal with that?

Corbyn has been blamed for lack of leadership but the reality is there is no national 'labour' identity. It means something different in local areas and there are such a wide range of approaches to serving those that MPs represent that you wonder if a good leader would be able to bridge that now.

Policy is not the issue. Nor is it middle class MPs trying to serve working class agendas (I think part of your job as an MP is to be able to serve all regardless of your background through empathy and experience. Not all MPs fit this. That's not down to just their background.) It's about a deeper identity crisis in labour. That's why Corbyn got in, in the first place as there is an ongoing debate about what socialism and who it is for.

The whole working class thing doesn't work. There are too many people who identify as working class but just aren't (my friend who is a doctor and lives in leafy London suburb and went to private school for one). Plus is restricting yourself along class lines self defeating? If you have success and have social mobility do you then cease to be of value and can no longer adhere to the principles that got you (or indeed your parents) there. In some ways Labour's success in this department is also it's downfall. The union's have not helped themselves either. Self serving leaders have undermined trust in their role. The achievements and need for unions have been questioned. Plus middle class people need unions too and this seems to be a forgotten reality of the time.

At the same time the wider liberalism of the Lib Dems that isn't based on class lines as such but is generally felt to be more middle class doesn't necessarily have that historical handicap. It's currently headed by someone with more working class roots than any of the other party. To say there is no appeal there to the working class is wrong. It could do a lot more and be a lot better at this but the capacity to do this isn't non existent. Where it fell down was in its association with the conservatives not because of what it's underlying ideology and direction is but because it had to compromise and that didn't end well. It has a broad church yet remains surprising unified in its intent. This is not just a result of its small number of members but also because of the party structure itself. It does not have the same rampant factionalism as a result. This is why is trending on Labour's toes. The can't make the jump to a wider appeal though because of entrenched views and tribalism which goes from generation to generation ( and because they 'betrayed the young'). 'I'm voting labour because my family has been labour forever' yet at the same time not questioning whether that's now the right place to be and being unhappy with Labour. The most people are forced to confront this question though...

Labour has to ask itself some big questions. These are about identity, structure, purpose and goals. Not just leadership.

Ukip has painted itself as the new party of the working class. I think it does many people in this group a massive disservice as it plays to the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of working class people without an education who don't fit the bracket. Why? What is it? Why do so many disillusioned not vote - including for ukip? Instead of copying ukip look for the gap in the market. And in fairness to Corbyn that is actually what he's tried to do. It's a tough task but that's really what they need to do as well as dealing with the problems with the unions and the rampant factionalism which is a symptom of Corbyn's ers but not caused by him but this indentity crisis.

birdy I think "armchair warrioring" is an irregular verb. It works the same way as other irregular verbs such as "predicting consequences":

If you're a Remainer expressing concern about some potentially negative outcome, this is known as Nobody knows what is going to happen! Nobody can predict the future!

If you're a Leaver forecasting the sunlit uplands ahead, this is known as We can see the future and Everything is definitely going to be Great in every possible way!

If May wanted to signal that the UK are open to the rest of the world, nobody is listening. There is very little coverage of her speech in the press outside the EU, even in countries that are regarded as part of the anglosphere, perhaps they are anglophobes

Don't dismiss the armchair warrior outright.

Many here are armchair warriors but many do things in addition to that.

Politics currently needs people out there doing things as well as armchair warriors.

Have you forgotten that it was not knocking on doors that won the referendum. It was something more than that.

Armchair warriors played a role. An important one.

Armchair warriors can help people engage. They have a place in modern politics in making politics about the little issues and turning them into something more. They are useful in fighting apathy and encouraging people that they can do something more rather than feel totally voiceless.

Activists come from somewhere. In the past it was student motivements, unions and direct local injustice mainly.

Now the capacity to network with people with common interest and goals has vastly expanded.

Understanding how you can turn from armchair warrior into something more and be able to get to the heart of an argument is crucial to making a difference. But you need knowledge to do that.

You need people on the ground and you need the ideas behind it to drive politics.

There seem a lot on here who feel our mode of negotiation should be begging the commission to be thrown a bone...

So instead the UK will be begging the US and China.
Good luck with that.

It's another New World Order, which happens every 60 years or so. Our populations are increasing all over the world and the current way things are run is unsustainable. Sadly, very sadly, this includes things like the NHS in our country, which I love. The welfare state in this country is untenable. Just look at the rest of the world, no one else provides so much for their citizens and there's a reason why! These changes in the world are scary for some but we have to make these shake ups to realign everything in the long term, albeit in a different way to how it is now. I just think everyone needs to hold their nerve and stop bashing everything. Change is not for the faint hearted.

"The intensity of my disgust at England in particular has surprised me, tbh."

I rather liked Blair's England. desperate shame he cocked up with Iraq and seems to have killed the labour party (and changed the world for the worse) as a result. Let's also not forget the NHS was set up by Labour. England is quite good under Labour policies. In some ways I am quite a traditionalist, I probably dress more like a Tori than Green, am happiest when at home with my family, 'd love to have a choc lab to walk in the downs; but the Tori party and the people it represents is indeed vomit inducing. I have met many at various social functions and there is something so fucked up about Tori 'culture' and identity. I know it's a generalisation but they lack empathy and humanity on a integral and fundamental level. This is of course reflected in wider british society under tori rule.

"no one else provides so much for their citizens " ...... most of the EU do