Westministenders: Brexit Britain = Gridlock Britain ?

[BigChocFrenzy]

We keep getting told the Uk can get a deal like Canada, Turkey or other non-EU countries have, without FOM.
Those deals do not provide the same privileges as EU members:
They have quotas, restrictions and must obey EU regulations

e.g. After CETA, Ron Davidson, head of international trade for the Canadian Meat Council stated:
"We do not have what we would call commercially viable access to the European market".

The deal with Turkey abolished tariffs, but did not give free acess. This is what that means:

www.ft.com/content/b4458652-f42d-11e6-8758-6876151821a6

"On a recent Saturday at the Kapikule border crossing, about 30 minutes drive from the Turkish city of Edirne, a line of trucks 4km long stretched along the highway, inching along glacially towards the Bulgarian checkpoints.
"Today is a good day", said Ibrahim Kurtukcu, a 42-year trucker who had been waiting 14 hours.
"Last week the line was 7km long".
The record is 17km. It can take up to 30 hours to get through to the other side."

Of course, UK ports (and French ports) do not have the capacity, facilities, storage space or trained staff to handle customs processing of the vast amount of British exports & imports.

Building this additional capacity - where ? - would take several years and there are no signs that even the planning stage has started.

yeah I bet its the echo chamber effect, where no one dare say anything like this to her, are blocked by her side kicks or are otherwise scorned.

It doesn't exactly bode well for the next couple of years does it?

Meanwhile Thanet South MP interviewed under caution over election spending .

I suspect people have warned her. And she's pushed them aside. No naysayers will be tolerated in TMs world.

I think you are right there. Being stubborn and refusing to listen can be right in some circumstances, but not when someone is telling you that a legal document you have had drawn up is badly worded.

So essentially, is the argument that the Brexit Bill should (as confirmed by the Supreme Court) have incorporated something along the lines of .....

"This House/Parliament agrees that the UK should leave the EU and thereby confers upon the Prime Minister the responsibility to invoke Article 50" etc?

You can tell I'm not a lawyer

If it's true, then it's not really on TM's head, is it?

Over 600 MPs and 800 Lords have been 'scrutinising' this tweet-sized bill for weeks.

As Gina Miller confirmed - Parliament is bigger than one person.
The shame is on all of them.

You're right, Semi - and I do think this might fall into the ever-expanding fake news folder. But, TM and her stooges clearly thought they had played a blinder by keeping the bill so ridiculously short. There would be poetic justice in their having got it spectacularly wrong.

I think a few MPs and Lords have pointed it out Semi.

Dominic Grieve certainly was making some sort of point the other day about the legal fuck nuggetory of the Bill.

It doesn't really matter if 16 million people happened to say something, if Theresa May doesn't want to listen to it and more people are saying "yes but we don't care about, ughhhh 'details'. Just do what we say"....

May's track record has consistently been act without consulting lawyers, then get stiffed later in court at the expensive of the taxpayer. Its not exactly a pattern of action which would depart from this is it? More a symptom of her style of management where she acts as a dictator and does not tolerate dissenting voices.

You couldn't make it up !

Clearly this government is insufficiently acquainted with the difference between its arse and its elbow

< Maybe we should be weeping, not laughing. These blithering idiots are shaping the country's future for the next decades >

If it's true, then it's not really on TM's head, is it?
Unless, as we suspect, she was told and refused to listen.

1400 MPs/Lords had the opportunity to say it in the commons/HoL though.

Why would not one of them say anything during the readings when they had the chance?

Why would not one of them say anything during the readings when they had the chance?

Maybe they will rejoice in watching May fall on her arse?

Semi "The buck stops here"

The PM is responsible for leading the country.
She would have taken the credit if it had gone smoothly, so she carries the can when it's a giant cockup.

It's her job to take advice from experts when doing this important
She doesn't bloody listen !

Why would not one of them say anything during the readings when they had the chance?
they don't want to be the ones making the decision. Will of the people = not our fault mate. Give TM the power to make the decision = not our fault mate.

I agree with you Semi - at least one of them should gave made the point explicitly, on the record, in either of the Houses

Unless of course it was a Machiavellian ploy by Labour/the Remainers to thwart Brexit

somehow I don't think they have that much nous

And TM has been a power crazed fool by not realising that if she got the full agreement of Parliament she could blame them too, if it all went tits up. But of course, she would have to give them credit for success, if that happened, and she doesn't want to do that.

I suspect too, that noone wanted the responsibility to say
"The King Queen is in the Altogether, the Altogether, the ...."

because they would all wonder "surely the govt legal experts would have flagged this up immediately.
I must be mistaken"

If this isn't some complicated hoax, then May's govt have horrendously embarassed the whole country.
Imagine the sniggers in Brussels, Moscow, Peking .... everywhere, really.

Prettybird - there's no end to the possible numbers of potential conspiracy theories now! (From all sides)
It's exhausting!

British politics is nearly always about cockups rather than effective conspiracies

If it's for real, it's a pretty funny note too, tone is a bit 'explain it carefully to a rather difficult and not fantastically bright customer'.

Why would it serve Labour or the Lib Dems or the SNPs purposes to do so? That's not how politics work. You'd sit on it, until after it had gone through and then drop the bombshell behind closed doors. A significant amount of politics occurred away from the cameras.

The more embarrassment you can cause the better. You want your political opponents to shoot themselves rather than looking like the assassin. Labour wants to be seen to be supporting Brexit and the SNP and Lib Dems are handicapped by their numbers which mean they can only really strike a real blow by creating a rebellion or by pulling a rabbit out of the hat by other means.

As for the Conservatives, anyone who has a dissenting voice is at risk of the threat of deselection or held back by their ministerial post. Most Conservative MPs will not be critical of the government in the chamber because of their own job positions. Instead they would seek to try and make the point privately - if they can get an audience with the relevant person (or advisor of) of course. And if they get that, that the relevant person listens (or the advisor passes it on).

David Cameron, consulted a much large number of people which by its nature gave more of his ministers the ability to get a message across. May's style is very different and makes that much more difficult to do - and its something MPs are struggling to adapt to by all accounts. This seems to be in combination with arch brexiteers actively almost acting as guard dogs to the PM from what has been written about what is going on in Westminster.

The whole system is currently not conducive to helping correct an error of this type and is made worse by May's personal style and political approach where she treats people in her own party - like Heseltine - with total contempt. Why don't employees point out glaring issues to bullies? Why did the problems at North Staffs Hospital go on for so long? Noting of course, who took the fall for that, and who has subsequently got new nice cushy jobs.

There are plenty within May's own party who would happily like to see her downfall, because of the way she is making enemies within the party, never mind those outside of it.

If it was on twitter on well followed, and well respected accounts from people who have already proved themselves influential to public opinion when it comes to Brexit, then ultimately the buck stops with the PM as you are not telling me that she hasn't had the ability to find out about this from her civil servants, advisors, MPs, party officials, constituency or number 10 staff. (It was also posted here on MN...and my rule of thumb is, if its on MN then the PM should know about it, and if she doesn't then she isn't doing her job properly - which includes ensuring her advisors are not crap and missing crucial things - because she should know more than us mere mortals on the internet).

Saying its the responsibility of all the MPs and Lords misses a fundamental point about why the situation has occurred. And it also misses the fundamental point that Theresa May wants to take control of Brexit negotiations with incredibly little scrutiny and involvement of parliament by keeping it to a very small closed circle of people.

The two fundamental points which are inextricably linked and problematic and unavoidably come back to the personal accountability of the PM herself rather than parliament.

Unless of course it was a Machiavellian ploy by Labour/the Remainers to thwart Brexit

somehow I don't think they have that much nous

I don't think Sturgeon is being Machiavellian. I do think she is doing well by letting events unfold slowly and taking action when it needs to be taken, having given the PM the opportunity first. Her timing seems to show a certain degree of nous.

If you are seriously telling me that not one MP nor Lord saw what Maugham or Green said on twitter I'd be surprised. They both are well connected and have some interesting followers.

Not to mention that there were a significant number of MPs that were unable to speak in the debate over the Brexit Bill due to the limitations on time and those who did had to be selective over what they said.

So, maybe if the house had been given adequate time to debate the matter rather than rushing the bill through, it might have popped up....

... I see no problem in rushing through Brexit negotiations either for similar reasons....

For example all those proposed amendments over 'impact assessments' for starters....

Pah. Details.

We don't do those. We are leaving the European Union.

I suspect the note is real. Whether it's credible is another matter

"Sources have claimed that May was always going to wait until the end of March to fire the Brexit starting gun, with plans to use the next two weeks building better consensus across the country and in different sectors."

Assuming the planned March for Europe on 25 March is pretty big, that timing could be explosive.

2 weeks to build consensus? These people are truly deluded.