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.

Lh The Holocaust is an evil crime without comparison in modern history; the deliberate genocide of a race, not as aftermath to any war with them, or any type of threat they posed

Totally agree.

It should NOT be compared to more recent wars for oil, led by Western venality & stupidity.

Also agree. And when you point out where I said that, you can be right. But since I didn't ...

Just for the hard of thinking, I am in no way defending Ken Livingstone, nor holocaust deniers in general. I was making a different point entirely...

Just for the hard of thinking, I am in no way defending Ken Livingstone, nor holocaust deniers in general. I was making a different point entirely
What was your point?

I'm pretty sure LH is pointing out the hypocrisy of people quitting the Labour Party over them dealing badly with Livingston but being happy to remain when Blair was leading us into an illegal war.

And I'm not doing personal attacks LH, so no 'hard of hearing' stuff, thanks.

Drifting OT, but it's amusing in a grim way, that people are disgusted with the Labour Party ruling on Ken Livingstone, and talking of quitting over it. I wonder where they were when Blair led us into an illegal war ? Maybe words are more deadly than bombs

Normally, I'd let this pass, but I'm not going to today, after what has just happened, in the Labour party in Jewish communities all over Britain.

You seem to be suggesting that Livingstone's remarks are less harmful than an illegal war ?

I would suggest back that you are conflating two very different things in very different times.

On the war, I'd not add much more than BCF's excellent post above.

On it being 'amusing in a grim way', I understood you to be suggesting that quitting the labour party over persistent and now officially tolerated anti semitism is petty?

Cynically you have a point. In failing states and political parties, anti semitism wins votes and thugs, it always has.

I've just always that it was a particularly lazy, morally and emotionally bankrupt way to do so, Shoah, aside.

Although the Shoah is never an aside.

I'm pretty sure LH is pointing out the hypocrisy of people quitting the Labour Party over them dealing badly with Livingston but being happy to remain when Blair was leading us into an illegal war.

Yep.

Causing death and suffering is unacceptable whatever race. The suffering inflicted on Iraq should not minimised simply because the numbers are smaller than the Holocaust.

I too found the reaction to Livingstone comparative to the acceptance of the Iraq war to be hypocritical and inconsistent.

That doesn't mean I think what Livingstone said was ok. Rather I would have liked to see more outrage over Iraq.

I understood LH to mean amusing in a macabre way not lol funny. But it wasn't a ideal choice of words in that context.

Nancy and Hashi but it's not just 'dealing badly', it's much worse. This is what Lammy warned was happening in the labour party.

Nancy and Hashi but it's not just 'dealing badly', it's much worse

I agree, but I would also say the same about Blair and Hoon et al.

I consider it FAR more serious that Labour tolerate a Holocaust denier who is a major public figure in the Labour Party.

As posted, the legal opinion on the Iraq war was divided and the interventions in Afghanistan & Syria have also produced bloody chaos & mass slaughter.

It would not significantly affect my opinion of Labour, other than again to their incompetence in foreign policy and the disaster that follows being the USA poodle - as many (not all) Brexiters plan.

Maybe because of my mother coming from the ME - we have always had a rock bottom opinion of all interventions by all parties and all outside countries in the ME. Always bloody disastrous, whatever their intentions.

The Holocaust is of a totally different degree - total evil vs the usual bloody Western bungling.

Equating the 2 issues - Holocaust and Iraq - is what the far left do.
They and he pander to the extreme anti-Israel vote which usually tries to minimise the Holocaust.

So, probably we are hypersensitive to that, because of the far left and far right joining up so often to unite in Holocaust denial.

I'm really upset about the Ken issue. I think that is what has driven me back to Mumsnet. It just opens the window onto how dysfunctional the opposition is.

We have a great, really great, Labour MP - and that is what is stopping me from defecting.

I have to keep reminding myself that the leadership is not the party as a whole. It's not even the PLP as a whole. But that, really, is part of the problem.

Whether the iraq war was legal or not sent the issue IMO.
The issue is that TB wet to war based on lies (again..) about the weapons in mass destruction.
The issue is that, as it was predicted at the time, it created mayhem and led to so many people losing their life's. Not just the military just at the time of war. It's all the civilians and all the repercusions we are still feeling today in Syria.
I'm not sure anyone has done a count of how many people have lost their lives following the war in Iraq. The Ines in Iraq, the Ines killed in terrorists attacks from ISIS and associates. The ones in Iraq. I wouldn't be surprised we are arriving at very very high numbers too (millions?). And all of those people died for the same reason, they weren't from the right side of Islam.

I also think it's very dangerous to say that nothing can be compared to the WW2. Because you Take the risk of minimising what happens NOW and make it 'not as serious'. And I do think that the religious cleansing happening in the ME atm is a very serious issue TBH. One that we should be taking as seriously as religious (or ethnic) cleansing that happened during the WW2 or during the war in the Balkans.

They and he pander to the extreme anti-Israel vote which usually tries to minimise the Holocaust

On Israel:
How many injured Syrians has Britain taken in and nursed compared to Israel?
How many democracies are there in the middle east which support LGBT rights?
How many democracies operate in the west bordered on all sides now by fascists? ( I guess we'll soon know)
How many middle eastern nations have rushed to help each other, especially the Palestinians?
Did you know it is the size of Wales?
Which Western nations did an airlift of starving Falasha Jews from Ethiopia in the 1980s?
How many middle eastern nations are so multi cultural with Indian, African even Chinese Jews?
Israel, like Britain is deeply flawed. But it is not, as many liberals in the west portray it as, apartheid South Africa. It is a human attempt to live a life as a democracy surrounded by countries who want to "drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea".

And finally if it hadn't been for the last holocaust, many Jewish families would have still been living in their towns and villages in Poland, France and Germany, not being hit by rocks as they disembarked for a sea crossing after 2 years as a refugee in Europe because Britain wouldn't take them in. And living under British Rule in Israel for years before independence,; several Israeli freedom fighters were hanged for the privilege. Believe me, they, north European Jews, who had lived safely in Europe for generations had no desire to go to a tiny, hot desert country after suffering so much.

There is much laziness in attacking Judaism and Israel, and easy prejudice, which will get very easy votes.

Corbyn's probably put on a few thousand with siding with the anti semites.

It happened in Oxford 300 years ago. There's a plaque to the Jews of Oxford who were driven out, in the current Oxford Botanical Gardens. Not long ago.

I agree, but I would also say the same about Blair and Hoon et al.
Did they attack Jews, at a time when racist and anti semitic attacks are at an all time high, and the US is led by a fascist?

I have a story and then I will be quiet, so as not to disrupt the thread.

On an equal opportunities course, I was on, white and black women were separated. White women had to separately discuss their own racist behaviour and solutions on their own. I was appalled, how could I be racist if I was on this course? Then I thought about it. And I learnt more on that course about racism through thinking about my own attitudes and behaviour than I had ever learnt before.

No-one is equating Iraq and the Holocaust as far as I can see.

I'm finding the the minimising of the horror and the ignominy of Iraq appalling tbh. The fact that the scale of the Holocaust was so much larger does not negate the suffering of the individuals in Iraq - those tortured at Abu Ghraib, etc. I don't think Iraqis would be too impressed to be patronised with the notion that their suffering isn't 'as bad' because it wasn't part of intentional genocide, just a mistake. I count Afghanistan with Iraq too as they were part of the same campaign, and we shouldn't have been there either.

The fact that we're not entirely sure that the war wasn't illegal, and that BCF's mother's is ME and doesn't expect the West to behave itself there - is no mitigation.

I don't believe that either of those interventions were justified. I think they were simply geopolitical neo-colonial campaigns for resources. The whipping up of public Islamophobia was intended to gain support for military action.

Evil is evil, small scale or large scale. Killing is killing. Torture is torture.

I also think it's very dangerous to say that nothing can be compared to the WW2. Because you Take the risk of minimising what happens NOW and make it 'not as serious'

I entirely agree with your whole post GreenPeppers, but this in particular I wanted to emphasise.

I'm not sure it is disrupting the thread. The fact we're having this discussion, now, highlights the scale of the problem there is as regards a real opposition (with regards to Brexit or to the current government).

There's so much that is wrong, it is, genuinely, quite hard to know where to start. Or what to start with.

Peregrina and Pretty a cook's tour of the Scottish legal system. I agree that the reference to different legal systems making UK incompatible with continental Europe is nonsense. (Actually if you delve back further than the article does English common law has the same roots in the Roman civil law but the emphasis re reliance on precedent vs principle is different).

thestudentlawyer.com/2013/06/17/the-scottish-legal-system-in-a-nutshell/

I have my head in the sand over the Labour Party but I do find all the cheap political point scoring, within and without the Party, over such serious matters deeply distasteful and McCarthyist.

^Did they attack Jews, at a time when racist and anti semitic attacks are at an all time high, and the US is led by a fascist?

No they attacked two countries under the pretence of looking for Bin Laden/Al Qaeda with evidence they were linked to either, which led to between 150,000 - 1,000,000 deaths in Iraq alone.

If, as I believe, these were resource wars I would argue they were fascistic in themselves. Not so much lebensraum as lebensressourcen.

^^ with NO evidence that should say.

I've just last week quit the labour party for the second time. The first was on the eve of the Iraq war. I won't be a member of a party which is so controlled by momentum at my local level and so destroyed by Corbyn and his idiotic cronies at the top with the PLP acting gutless in the middle

I've joined the libdems so far so good. I have to be a part of an opposition against this government and it's actions. Labour is not and can not do that. There is rot in the bones of the party. Livingstone shows that

I never have understood how some lefties like Ken think it is OK to be prejudiced against one side to defend another. It's really hardly ever that simple. Very 1980s thinking

Howabout - I was going to mention the different approach to precedent but as a non-lawyer, didn't have the confidence to do so

I do have a friend who's on the Scottish Law Society group looking at constitutional issues and Brexit.

The rest of my knowledge of law is based on my understanding of Mens Rea and corroboration (both of which were relevant to an offence my dad had been charged with and which the Fiscal belatedly eventually decided would be dropped not before my dad had racked up a bill of £900 ) and having to lead teams dealing with complicated contracts under Scots Law as an Account Manager (did once get accused of being a lawyer because I was being pernickety! )

Those EU tshirts for your summer holidays in Europe should also carry the slogan "Brexit: A Tory catfight that got out of hand"

Don't want to derail the thread, but I was looking at the data I had in that graph, I was assuming the top posters were just people who disappeared after the vote (they were), but no, I had screwed up and managed to take the last page of threads over over and over again in my script (yes I did write it in a hurry), so I have updated it.

Erm, RTB I'm afraid you're top now. And that's just number of posts of not number of actual words.

The top posters are now all familiar names (all remainers I think). I have also now screwed up the graph a bit. I think I will fix it and start a new thread.

Hang on, Donald Trump may be a fascist, but he's a strange one because he is very pally with Israel and Netanyahu. The latter had declared that Israel is too small to take in refugees but they have now declared they will take in 100 orphaned children. I find it hard to see that as generous. Neither of course is Britain that went back on their word to take in 3500 children but stoppd at 350.

The problem with Livingston is that he won't apologise and keeps repeating the same crap.
He should be suspended and only allowed back if he apologises and promises never again to give comfort or cover to the Holocaust deniers.

He and his supporters are a nasty embarassment, but imo haven't had much effect on Labour's electability.
Every party had embarassing people; although the problem is much worse when the leader clearly tolerates them and doesn't genuinely think they are wrong.

In contrast, Labour has been tearing itself apart since 2008 over Iraq, which is a major reason why it has become so useless as an Opposition.

Labour can choose to keep agonising .... in which case those opposed to a hard right govt and a Ballsed-up Brexit need to choose another party as their champion

The right way to handle Blair was to ensure he resigned, that the Labour party formally apologises for deceiving the country and promises never to "sex up" evidence again wrt supporting wars

• preferably not wrt any issue, but that's probably too much to ask of a political party in the UK.

The war was started by the USA for oil and they were always going to have their war, their loot, their torture and their rapes.
The UK was a v minor player and did not make the war more likely, or more bloody.
So, the actual effect on Iraq of poodle Blair was zero, as usual with US poodles

We see today the love affair half the US seems to have with victimising and torturing Muslims
And TMay ignores it

We need to elect a govt that will condemn Trump, who is FAR worse than Bush, not condone and suck up to him like T May does.
Trump is a maniac, beyond any civilised norms, even previous GOP ones. He endangers the world.

We need a UK govt that will campaign against arms sales to the fascist theocratic regime in Saudi Arabia - responsible for a horrific dictatorship at home and nearly all Islamic terrorism in the West.
It is outrageous that they have never been called to account, but that is because the the big arms dealers and oligarchs like Trump support them.

Damn you SummerLightning!