Westministenders: Boris and The By-Elections

[RedToothBrush]

You lot post too fast!

A50 has made it out of the Commons without any amends. Its on its way to the Lords, but this week is half term, so in theory not much going on (in the UK at least). It hit the Lords on the 20th where it might not get such an easy ride. The Lords will not (and CAN NOT) stop brexit or frustrate it. But the numbers are in perhaps more favour of amendments if they choose to go that way, than the Commons. This would throw the bill back to the Commons. This is pretty reasonable.

In the meantime its 12 days to go until the Copeland and Stoke Central By-Elections.

Leave.Eu think UKIP have Stoke in the bag. They think there will be a 33% turnout. I think a turnout that high is the land of fantasy. Paul Nuttalls who was at Hillsborough is now a devout Stokie who has lived there all his life. Except of course he isn't.

Copeland looks like it will go Conservative. Its theirs to throw away. It would be the first victory for a sitting government in a by-election since 1983 if they make it. They intend to use a victory as another argument for a 'mandate'. But have they managed to drop a nuclear booboo?

One more Question. What are the chances of this thread making it to the 23rd?!

Eeee Booker was scathing about the EU before the ref and wrote for Leave, e.g.

leavehq.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=234

Wmds. You could argue the whole failed experiment in one of big weapon of mass destruction destruction. so sad to see the waste lands of southern Europe on that documentary. Once thriving towns now rotting away. Italy third biggest bank swamped under 40 billion pounds of debt. The hunagarian border protected with not only razor wire but vicious patrols with huge dogs, beatings given to migrants who sneak through, and even junker welcoming his fellow compatriot as dictator on stage whilst slapping him cheerily on the back

The horrendous complexities of leaving the EEA were not properly explained during the referendum campaign, because noone would believe "Project Fear"

Now it's "Doom-and-gloomers" or some such if anybody mentions complexity. Conversely, we must not consider going on "a war footing" to be doomy or gloomy - that is apparently now the height of optimism .

People like corcory, wrongtrousers and semi could do a lot to improve our collective opinion of brexiters by making some rational and knowledgeble comments on this article. Over to you.

Perhaps if you hadn't asserted that 99% of all posts by Leavers on these threads are stupid, racist or both, then you would have some response.

And it is now a 'collective opinion' on this thread then that we are stupid racists? Not just yours?

Crikey.

Prove people wrong then semi

If you're so convinced Brexit is going to be marvellous, tell us how you see NTB's being overcome

Would Booker receive 14 years under the proposed legislation for journalists leaking on Brexit ?

He is claiming that May has not made adequate any plans for the consequences of leaving the EEA and he is warning of a "night,are scenario"
That surely is vitally important info for the EU negotiators

....but wait, they know already of the risk.
There are no secrets in Brexit - except keeping the UK public in the dark until it's too late.

A major reason Brexit scares the E27 so much is they think the UK is delusional about a soft landing after hard Brexit and so is not planning to do anything

Prove people wrong then semi

Why? I don't demand that you or anyone else 'prove' anything to anyone.

I know a lot of Leavers and non, so far, have changed their mind.
No Leavers are going to come here to comment when all you do is insult us.

Why?

Because it's beyond tiresome that all the Leavers round here find excuses to avoid answering questions.

You seem to think you fool us into thinking you are choosing not to answer but the reality is that we all know the truth is you have no answers.

Hard Brexit is going to be disaterous and TM and the MP's who've voted to trigger A50 have set themselves up to avoid all responsiblility for it by continually repeateding the 'will of the people' mantra.

Like the sensible plan, Misti. Ireland though a special problem...remaining in CU by hook or by crook might mitigate that?

NI is a special case only because of the political context (risk of breakdown in the peace process), and the extent of cross-border transport of foodstuffs, often a very short distance, with several back-and-forth border trips, with small margins that would not survive customs costs, and in an economically deprived region.

But the NI economy is small. The rUK has a much bigger issue with customs, simply because the volume of trade is so much larger. There is a real risk that Dover and the North Sea ports could turn into giant lorry parking lots without a transitional agreement. There is not enough time to agree and implement a complex new customs agreement in the A50 timescale. If we fall out of the CU in March 2019 I am confident that it will be a disaster for trade. (For the sake of full disclosure I am an economist working for one of the UK's larger exporters. That doesn't make me an expert - customs law isn't my thing - but it gives me some insight into the scale of the problem).

Nobody has to prove anything, we can't force you.
However if you want people to believe you and engage in a reasoned argument it is best to give reasons. That is why it's called "reasoned."

BigChoc thanks again for the link. So basically growing from a fairly lean and beneficial trading bloc to a full-blown political project and collapsing under its own weight. I can relate to a lot of that. For example, despite being broadly pro EU I could never fully get behind the Euro. Nevertheless, I don't see walking away as the answer, and now that we are, I would have thought it was common sense to do so in the most amicable way possible.

The Daily Mail (apologies) is claiming that Theresa May wants a soft Brexit but remainers are stopping her achieving this .

May is perplexed at suddenly finding herself the darling of Eurosceptics. Speaking to her inner circle before a meeting with leading Tory rebels, she remarked: ‘I don’t understand it. I voted Remain. Why do they think I’ve suddenly become some crazed Brexiteer?’

...the reality is more complicated. May was advised by one of her chief strategists, Nick Timothy, to back Brexit for precisely the reasons outlined by Cameron. But following a long heart-to-heart with her husband Philip, she adopted a more pragmatic approach. The economic dangers, the potential impact on national security co-operation, and the practical difficulties of constructing ‘fortress Britain’ on immigration persuaded her to stick with the Government’s line.

It is that same pragmatism that will guide her approach to Brexit in the coming months – and that last week found her expressing exasperation at the fundamentalists from the Leave and Remain camps.

May privately supported a number of the principles set out in the rebel amendments. But she believed it would be disastrous for her negotiating strategy if she was seen by fellow European leaders to have suffered a series of embarrassing defeats on the issue.

‘If they think the House of Commons is driving the negotiating position, then Europe will just ignore her,’ an ally explained. ‘Her position throughout all this has been: “I can’t be seen to be negotiating with one hand tied behind my back.”’

...It is the Remainers, not the Leavers, who appear to have been attempting to defy the democratic will of the people. And crucially, May has been backed so far into a corner, she has been given no option but to make common cause with Brexit’s true believers.

She now needs to be freed from that corner. When the Prime Minister says: ‘I’m not a crazed Brexiteer’, she is telling the truth. Behind the negotiating stance she does not crave a hard Brexit, so much as a fair Brexit. When she said in her New Year message that she would seek the ‘right deal, not just for those who voted to leave, but for every single person in this country’, she meant it. And she now needs to be given the space to deliver it.

Perhaps if you hadn't asserted that 99% of all posts by Leavers on these threads are stupid, racist or both, then you would have some response.

You've had over 6 months to come up with some informed discussion points. Some of us are fed up of waiting and have concluded that you have nothing to say.

Why do we think she's become a crazed Brexiteer?

Because she has become a crazed Brexiteer and some of us use our brains.

Because it's beyond tiresome that all the Leavers round here find excuses to avoid answering questions

This, precisely. Colour me cynical but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it's because they can't answer them.

My objections would have ended a couple months after the ref result if I had any confidence that May and her 3 Dunces understood what Hard Brexit meant - they seem to have only focused on ending the FOM and gone lalala about the consequences of leaving the EEA.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. No wonder people are still 'remoaning' when all we've seen so far is a shambles, presided over by a woman so desperate for a deal that she'll stick her head up the arse of people like Trump and Erdogan. It's been 8 months since the referendum and there's been no attempt at all to unite the country. It seems to me that the starting point for this would be (a) acknowledging dissent, (b) having proper debates about how we might proceed, rather than steamrollering ahead with a hard Brexit, (c) showing that that we will behave in a decent way to EU people living in the UK and UK citizens abroad, that we will not water down workers' rights or environmental protections etc. Instead, we're expected to get in line behind something we are unable to believe in because we do not share the fundamental values of the people we're meant to be getting behind, or have faith in their ability to lead or negotiate.

If TM and the Department for Exiting the EU had shown themselves to be competent and willing to listen, a lot of remain voters would have accepted the vote by now.

For those interested, Andrew Rawnsley gives a more convincing explanation in the Observer.

(It's still partly the remainers' fault though ).

Full The EU is a union, not a unicorn

All Remainers agree there are countless problems it doesn't deal with properly, including also climate change, wars in the Middle East, Russia ....

That's a strange reason for the UK to choose the self-harm in Hard Brexit.

The refugee problem - and ISIS - was caused by the US / UK wars for profit and power destablising the whole region; the migrants were driven by climate change and internal conflict
The EU didn't create those millions of refugees, but it has to deal with them, because they are at EU borders.

The EU public don't want millions more MENA migrants / refugees and it is disingenuous to claim the UK public wants them all allowed through - or Farage's infamous poster wouldn't have been so effective.
Of course after Brexit, those millions could all be waved through Calais if you prefer ?

How individual countries fare inside the EU is overwhelmingly down to their national governments.
Countries that continually make rash decisions about public spending, infrastructure, not collecting income tax, allowing crony capitalism, kleptocracy etc will not do well, inside or outside the EU, or the WTO.

Why do we think she's become a crazed Brexiteer?

That article has entirely missed the most important factor which is driving May into a damaging Brexit: her loyalty to the Tory party, and her willingness to risk sacrificing her country to keep her party together. It also misses the impact of the absence of opposition, and the "fear factor" which appears to be preventing those close to power from delivering bad news about the feasibility, or otherwise, of the government's negotiating strategy.

I don't think May is a crazed brexiteer, but she certainly needs to appear to be so in order to keep her unruly back (and front) benchers in check. And we can be fairly confident, based on her HO record that she is, if not outright racist, then at least pretty comfortable with pandering to racists. She also has notable lack of moral compass (something that seems to have infected even the more "normal" members of the current cabinet, see: Amber Rudd).

No wonder people are still 'remoaning' when all we've seen so far is a shambles, presided over by a woman so desperate for a deal that she'll stick her head up the arse of people like Trump and Erdogan. It's been 8 months since the referendum and there's been no attempt at all to unite the country. It seems to me that the starting point for this would be (a) acknowledging dissent, (b) having proper debates about how we might proceed, rather than steamrollering ahead with a hard Brexit, (c) showing that that we will behave in a decent way to EU people living in the UK and UK citizens abroad, that we will not water down workers' rights or environmental protections etc. Instead, we're expected to get in line behind something we are unable to believe in because we do not share the fundamental values of the people we're meant to be getting behind, or have faith in their ability to lead or negotiate.

If TM and the Department for Exiting the EU had shown themselves to be competent and willing to listen, a lot of remain voters would have accepted the vote by now.

This is what I meant by my posts about a "competent Brexit" above (except that you've expressed it better than I did).

If remainers are still furiously opposed, it's because what's being proposed is so fundamentally ludicrous, and the implementation so alarming incompetent, that only the credulous, the ignorant, or the so-rich/old-it-won't-affect-them can get behind it.

Misti when someone is a politician and determining law and policy, does it matter if she doesn't really want Brexit per se? She is making it happen.

Can someone explain why talk or collapsing economies is hysteria but comparing the EU to WMD is not