Westminstenders: And so it begins

[RedToothBrush]

Promises made that can not be kept.

We have already fallen at the first stumbling block: the desire for parallel talks on exit and future relationship that May wanted has been rejected. Not that this is a surprise seeing as we were told this.

This isn't two years of negotiations for a good deal. Forget any suggestions that it is. It's two years of damage limitation and domestic pr.

For both the UK and EU.

I do believe that May's attitude - which seemed to be more friendly in her speech and letter yesterday - has burnt all our bridges.

This talk of the world needing the EU's 'liberal democracy' isn't aimed at the EU though. Her use of the words that produced uproar in the HoC yesterday was deliberate. Why use it? It was always going to produce a reaction.

When May says she will have a consensus at home to achieve this goal one of two things must happen: to prove just how much we need the EU to make a political reversal possible at the expense of her head or to vilify the EU to a point that Remainers suddenly change their mind.

To get a good deal for the UK she can not satisfy her hard line Brexiteers. It is impossible purely because to do otherwise is like breaking the laws of physics. Trade is done mostly with who you are closest too. This is the inescapable truth. We are leaving the EU but not Europe as keeps being pointed out.

If we want to trade we have to accept EU regulations. If we do not, we do not trade. Rules we can now no longer influence by must obey.

We can not reduce immigration. We have had control of non-Eu immigration and that is not going down due to skills shortages. To combat this schools are getting less money.

In terms of sovereignty and British parliament we just gave that away. The 'Great' Repeal Act is a power grab by the executive. It seems to give the powers of the monarch to Mrs May and take them away from parliamentary scrutiny. At the same time we are forced to become beholden to Trump's America. A man who screws people for a living and has not a shred of honour.

Using security as our bargaining chip misses the obvious. If we do not cooperate we endanger Brits abroad and ourselves domestically. Are we really prepared to stop?

The opportunities of Brexit Britain are bleak. This will be normalised.

Good luck folks. We are gonna need it.

Exactly we should be afraid.

Of ourselves

If you read the Telegraph article - I did, I had to hold my nose - you find that it's really a military man calling for a bigger slice of the Defence pie. It was informative to read just how reduced our Navy is now, although I knew that we hadn't got a working aircraft carrier. We must make it up with the Frogs and ask them to lend us one.

Howard has now been criticised for his stupid remarks. When oh when are we going to get rid of these idiots?

Mistigri! I should get a keyboard shortcut done for the emoticon

Really? A retired Rear Admiral informs us that 'we can still singe the King of Spain's beard'?

We're not just nationalist, indefatigable moaners and arrogant tossers - we're also truly demented as a nation.

Honi soit qui mal y pense. Only don't say that out loud or your proud fellow citizens may assume you're a bloody foreigner and beat seven bells out of you.

God thatcher was a fucking nightmare. But these clowns? It's like clockwork orange on a fuck load of acid

Ach don't take it seriously, it's just another threat they're going to have to row back on.

Can o take the fuck load of acid if they ovet play their mark?

Calm down all, Spain and the UK are NATO allies, so no one's going to be fighting anyone. At the same time, it would be nice if Spain could keep their unsubtle designs on our sovereign territory to themselves - you'd think they'd have learned something in 300 years.

Yep I know that.

So why fuck up diplomatic relationships. ....unless unless yet again the bastards think they can play us

Even so it is sickening. Wankers

Michael Howard is a knobhead.

This is my intelligent contribution to the thread today.

I think its pitched at precisely the right level and in the right tone. Any further discussion of what he said, rather suggests he worthy of anything more.

Still at least Brexit is going well.

The EU are probably having a right laugh at the sabre-rattling over Gibraltar while Scotland & NI are legging it out the back door...

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2017/apr/02/martin-rowson-on-the-british-passports-post-brexit-redesign-cartoon

If you read the Telegraph article - I did, I had to hold my nose - you find that it's really a military man calling for a bigger slice of the Defence pie.

I am sure that the military man was quoted entirely out of context, but the fact that the Telegraph saw fit to publish this is frightening. Someone wrote that article with the blessing of Telegraph management - in fact some poor hack (probably the sort the Richard North suggests we should water rather than read) was no doubt despatched specifically to drum up some warmongering quotes.

The article was retweeted by a Der Bild correspondent, and has been getting a lot of horrified comments in both German and Spanish.

It seems that we are hell bent on trashing our international reputation.

Sock puppets on MN duty tonight. Tells you that things are not going quite to plan.

comfort, the threats of fighting, etc are all from the Telegraph and Michael Howard. I believe DD also made some comments about being prepared to go to war, which were supposed to be reassuring, I believe?

Frankly, I'm a bit pissed off with the "Calm down dear!" attitude, when remainers react to some Brexiteer stupidity. There was lots of it going on on the blue passport thread, as well.

( I am sure most leavers didn't vote to leave because of wanting a blue passport, which we would have been allowed to have as EU members, anyway, but when Andrew Rosindell starts spouting off about the humiliation of having a "pink" passport, I think it's reasonable to find that a somewhat ridiculous, and to make a comment about it.)

The Martin Rowson cartoon is hilarious - look closely at the crest.

El Pais and El Mundo have picked up on that Telegraph article now.

We are now officially the laughing stock of the civilised world.

'We' who is this 'we'?

I am considering wearing a t-shirt with an EU flag on for the next two years to avoid being confused with people like Howard.

'We' who is this 'we'?

This is the 65 million who are behind Theresa May. I have always said that Theresa May can't count so divide that by, ......whatever number you feel like. This is not the 100,000 of us who marched last weekend, because we were invisible. It's not our foreign born friends because they are citizens of nowhere, and since nowhere doesn't exist, neither do they.

On a more serious note - who thought that A50 would start going tits up quite so quickly? The ink is barely dry on the letter!

Agree Peregrina. I have to say I voted remain because I thought wars in Europe were more likely if we left, but I never thought that we would be singing come and have a go if you think you're hard enough in less than a week

Peregrina, just goes to prove we should have avoided the problem of wet ink, and instead of using vellum and a quill, notified the EU via email.

' "We could cripple Spain in the medium term and I think the Americans would probably support us too." '

As someone mentioned above, both UK and Spain are NATO allies. What would the Americans do? And Spain aren't making more of a claim wrt Gibraltar than they were for the last few years. This disputed sovereignty thing is not new.

That article from the Telegraph is a bit of propaganda.
'Lord Howard said the Prime Minister will stand by Gibraltar during Brexit talks amid claims of an EU “land grab” for the territory.'

How strange. The EU are in fact doing the opposite. They are having nothing to do with the sovereignty issue as they state it is for the UK and Spain to sort out separately between them. Sovereignty will not be part of the negotiations at all. They are throwing it right off their table. It is just that Spain have a veto over whether the deal applies to Gibraltar or not. The UK don't have to accept the deal. The outrage is being manufactured.

I suppose it riles enough of their target audience up into a patriotic fervour akin to a religious zeal about the issue. Then they mightn't notice how this gov't is performing.

Maybe the British gov't seem to conflate the EU and NATO because only Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Sweden are not also members of NATO. Even today, Michael Fallon said that it was very important to link trade and security. And this is the week the UK send 800 troops to Estonia as part of their NATO commitment. He says it himself, it is part of their NATO commitment. Not EU commitment. I wonder they feel this cooperation needs to be addressed in an EU free trade deal? At the risk of repeating, It doesn't need to be linked to trade. They are choosing to leave Europol and outrage was always being manufactured about the European Arrest Warrant.

That Spiegel cartoon is perfect!

From the WP link wrt the Empire, etc:
Brexit will “be a considerable blow to Commonwealth nations that export to Britain,” as the Financial Times reported: “Thirty-two Commonwealth countries, mainly in Africa and the Caribbean, are covered by free-trade agreements with the E.U. These states therefore enjoy duty-free and quota-free access to the E.U. for nearly all their goods. . . . Once the UK is out of the E.U., these countries will end up paying $800m a year in additional duties to access the UK market, according to an analysis by the Commonwealth Secretariat.”

The reality is that many Commonwealth nations simply don’t need Britain. Australian exports to its former colonial ruler amounted to just 1.4 percent of its total outgoing trade. Canada, which shares a huge land border with the United States, will always look south, not east. India, once the jewel in Britain’s imperial crown, has an economy already roughly the same size as Britain’s; Indian moguls now own some of Britain’s most iconic companies.

“In anglophone Africa, the game is already up,” British historian David Olusoga noted in the Guardian. “The motorbikes on the freeways of Accra and Lagos are Chinese, assembled by local mechanics from kits shipped direct from Shandong.

So actually Brexit has screwed the Commonwealth too.

It is time for Theresa May to stand up and stop this madness about war with Spain.