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Brexit

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

995 replies

RedToothBrush · 17/01/2017 15:17

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.

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cakeycakeface · 18/01/2017 18:07

May I join you all ... from Scotland. I have read most of the thread. After yesterday, this post shared by Open Britain today - from last year - seems particularly salient. I hope the link works. It very simply explains the complexity of trade deals.

www.facebook.com/OpenBritain/videos/1176877825685873/

RedToothBrush · 18/01/2017 18:10

markets.jpmorgan.com/research/email/g710g98v/q54fPe_t9deyGVFlz9mRpw/GPS-2229790-0
JP Morgan statement on May's Speech.

The substance of PM May’s speech was so extensively trailed in the media that little in it comes as a meaningful surprise. May confirmed that her vision of the UK’s future is not consistent with ongoing membership of the single market. May stated that both Houses would get to vote on the deal the UK reaches with the EU – it has always been likely this would be the case. May wants to have the freedom for the UK to make its own deals while still facilitating free flows of trade with the EU – a deal on customs co-operation, while leaving the customs unions has always been likely.

One might expect a successful negotiating strategy to have ambitious objectives and a credible fall back position. May certainly has the former. But we doubt the Prime Minister has the latter.

Concluding a free trade agreement with the necessary breadth and scope to create something close to continuity in the UK’s trading arrangements, and doing so within a two-year period, would be unprecedented. Such a deal will be a mixed agreement requiring ratification in all 27 EU member states. It will need to encompass mechanisms for regulation and standard setting across the existing swathe of trade while creating a body for dispute resolution that is not the ECJ but respected by both sides. While the structures that generated these trading relationships have evolved over 43 years of the UK’s EU membership, they will need to be codified in a new bilateral Treaty in something close to two years, without the process becoming bogged down by sectoral interventions or by concerns that the EU and the UK have different ideas on appropriate structures of regulation.

The notion that the UK can simply “fall back” to WTO rules as providing an alternative (as summarised in “no deal is better than a bad deal”) is, in our view, very dangerous. Significant parts of the UK service sector would, under these conditions, lose their ability to provide services to EU-based counterparties overnight. Much of the plumbing that supports trade in goods and services on a day-to- day basis would be left without defined administrative processes and legal foundation. The imposition of tariffs is almost a side show relative to these issues. In addition, the UK is threatening that under constrained market access it would reinvent itself as a pseudo-Singapore of Northern Europe via low corporate tax rates and a ‘new economic model’. We note that the success of such low-tax entrepots has typically been at least partially based on the ability of firms to access markets in their locale, not on the withdrawal of that access. And, as we wrote yesterday, it is far from clear that there is a durable political commitment to the UK becoming a permanently low-corporate tax, low-regulation locale.

Taken as a whole, we do not view the no-deal WTO option as credible. So what happens in these negotiations? We assume that the EU will not seek a punitive arrangement for the UK, only that it will negotiate guided by its legitimate self-interest. Even so, we see a high likelihood of a disruptive and damaging outcome. For some time, we have argued that the bespoke FTA route would ultimately see the UK realise that it could not land the required deal within a pre-2020 election timeframe, while the option of a “WTO only” route would be recognised as untenable. Hence, it would be forced to prioritise a set of sectoral deals while seeking to extend the Article 50 process, and the result would be an exit under a hastily arranged patchwork of deals with some sectors seeing significant disruption upon the EU exit. An alternative (to which we ascribe only slightly less probability) is that the EU offers the UK a heavily modified temporary version of EEA membership to allow further time for discussion on future arrangements as the EU exit occurs. While that may have broader sectoral coverage, accepting it would come at high political cost for May, having eschewed the EEA route at the outset.

The next few months and the beginning of the Article 50 negotiation will be key. The crystallisation of the UK government’s approach is likely to generate a renewed wave of research and reaction from business, which may influence how the administration is viewing the process.

Furthermore, we suspect that the EU itself will warn that the UK is trying to accomplish too much in a limited time frame, and may suggest other ways of moving toward those aims.

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Peregrina · 18/01/2017 18:10

Re Lord of the Flies - mixed company would provide a different dynamic but I don't know how a society with all women would be. My limited experience of primary teaching showed that boys tended to thump each other then it was over and they were friends again. With girls, there was this ner, ner, ner, xxx doesn't like you, you smell, type of thing, going on all the time

squoosh · 18/01/2017 18:10

Hashtag getalife?

They're a bunch of teenage boys. Particularly charmless teenage boys.

woman12345 · 18/01/2017 18:10

Bojo's comments and Gove's too are a set up. It's their strategy atm.

Back to Hannah Arendt. Old tricks are the best tricks.

RedToothBrush · 18/01/2017 18:18

Rupert Myers ‏*@RupertMyers*
To type 'snowflake' on your keyboard using a handy shortcut, just hold down 'alt' & 'right'

Thank you Mr Myers Grin

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woman12345 · 18/01/2017 18:20
Grin
birdybirdywoofwoof · 18/01/2017 18:21

Hashtag get a life?

Ah he's copying the master tweeter.

RedToothBrush · 18/01/2017 18:24

www.channel4.com/news/trump-cyber-tsar-giuliani-among-swathes-of-hacked-top-appointees
Trump “cyber tsar” Giuliani among swathes of hacked top appointees

Passwords used by Donald Trump’s incoming cyber security advisor Rudy Giuliani and 13 other top staff members have been leaked in mass hacks, a Channel 4 News investigation can reveal.

Passwords are publicly available for key members of Trump’s cabinet, White House policy directors and aides and some of his most senior advisors, this programme has discovered.

Giuliani is Trump's Head of Cyber Security.

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InformalRoman · 18/01/2017 18:25

Joshua Rosenberg has tweeted:

I understand that all 11 justices will sit in the @UKSupremeCourt for the Brexit judgment next Tuesday but only Lord Neuberger will speak.

Suggests a unanimous decision.

Peregrina · 18/01/2017 18:29

Good measured statement from J.P. Morgan.

accepting it would come at high political cost for May,

I will be more than happy to see this. What is for the good of the country should be considered. At the moment, I still believe it's the EU. I would welcome proper debate about alternatives, but not the crass stupid remarks from Gove and Johnson and not wishful thinking about how wonderful a trade deal with Trump will be.

RedToothBrush · 18/01/2017 18:31

Law and policy ‏**@Law**andpolicy
My view on A50 appeal:
35% - May win
35% - May loss, parliamentary approval needed
20% - as above, with formal devolution role
10% - ECJ ref

Law and policy ‏**@Law**andpolicy
Law and policy Retweeted Law and policy
A May loss, either 2 or 3 of these options, is, in my view, above 50:50.

But a May win cannot be ruled out.

ECJ reference unlikely.

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RedToothBrush · 18/01/2017 18:37

Suggests a unanimous decision.

No it doesn't

Joshua Rozenberg ‏*@JoshuaRozenberg*
It’s normal for only one justice to deliver a summary in the @UKSupremeCourt. That does not mean it’s a unanimous decision. Maybe, maybe not

Law and policy ‏*@Law*andpolicy
There is nothing you can infer about unanimity from the judgment being given by the president alone. He will summarise any dissents.

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ManonLescaut · 18/01/2017 18:46

No matter what Gove, Johnson and May claim. Any trade deal with Trump will be far less favourable than the old TTIP - to which he is opposed for damaging US workers and business interests.

We, and the EU could object to elements of TTIP we didn't like, and we could walk away from it.

Now we are do desperate for a trade deal with the US, the government is desperate to show to the world and the country it can pull off such a deal and quickly to justify Brexit. We will thus have to sign up to most unfavourable terms that will make TTIP look like a dream.

PattyPenguin · 18/01/2017 18:49

Malta's Prime Minister has said that any post-Brexit trade deal between Britain and the EU must be inferior to full membership.

This is from the only country that votes for us in the frickin' Eurovision Song Contest!

ManonLescaut · 18/01/2017 19:04
Grin
prettybird · 18/01/2017 19:17

I meant Lord of the Flies Blush That's what comes of trying to post while distracted, waiting to pick up ds from a school rugby tournament that he'd been helping coach at.

I'm sure if it had been just girls then that might also have been negative - which suggests that as a race, we work better with both genders contributing Grin (as another aside, I remember talking to a Sales Manager in ICI who'd refused to employ me as I was female but I'd then got a job - graduate trainee on a career path - skipping the stage where I worked as a Sales Rep and I'd then ended up working alongside him Winkwho claimed he'd never have a Sales Office that was 100% female as it would be too bitchy but he'd be ok with 100% of the Sales Assistants being male as he knew that would work because of his army experience ShockAngry)

MrsLupo · 18/01/2017 19:37

Wow, can't believe the Westministenders threads are still going, and going strong by the looks of how fast they're still filling up. Kudos to you, Red. I had to step away because I seemed to be off my face with anger most of the time, and also wasn't getting very much else done except reading and ranting! Hello to anyone who remembers me. Things just seem to be getting worse and worse, don't they? ShockAngry Sad

Lico · 18/01/2017 19:55

Maths : thank you very much for the links. I have gone through them but have printed the papers because they are really meaty and need proper reading. So interesting to read about Monnet and his views on the Special Relationship!

Peregrane · 18/01/2017 19:57

RedToothBrush - thank you so much for this thread. And for the other cogent posters contributing.

GhostofFrankGrimes · 18/01/2017 20:01

I remember it wasn't so long ago that socialists wanted to sack all the bankers, how times have changed.

No, reform is needed not throwing the baby out with the bath water which is what Brexit does. Brexit destroys everything. Vandalism indeed.

woman12345 · 18/01/2017 20:05

Laurence 'cash for access' 'Freedom Association' Robertson wants to get rid of the Good Friday Agreement.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/18/northern-irelands-system-government-broken-must-review-good/

HashiAsLarry · 18/01/2017 20:08

This is from the only country that votes for us in the frickin' Eurovision Song Contest!
Grin

That statement was just logic though wasn't it? Only the seriously deluded would assume we could come out of this with an equivalent or better deal. Though there are some who would take scraps if it meant getting rid of forriners.

Peregrane · 18/01/2017 20:29

"So far the UK is growing far better than the EU, why would companies leave a successful country and go to Europe where their is no growth?"

Suppermummy you do realise that "Europe" is not a single monolith (and by the way, the UK is part of "Europe" and will remain so after Brexit - it is not a separate continent..."

In case by "Europe" you meant "the rest of the EU", here are a few figures for you.

GDP growth
UK: 2.2%
Latvia: 2.7%
Hungary: 3.1%
Luxembourg: 3.5%
Poland: 3.9%
Czech Republic: 4.5%
Ireland: 26.3% (not a typo!)
ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/national-accounts/statistics-illustrated

These are the latest verified figures of year-on-year growth, from 2015. The 2016 figures are only going to be verified around April, and obviously there are only forecasts available for the coming years. Germany, for example, is expected to have grown at 1.9% in 2016, which you may note is closer to the UK rate than to "no growth"...

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