Westministenders: No Brexit is Better than a Bad Brexit

[RedToothBrush]

Happy Anniversary!!!

These Threads are officially 1 year old today.

I don't know who started the very first thread, but it was about how Cameron quitting had handed the Boris a poison chalice because he had to be the one to trigger a50 as Cameron walked away without having done it.

Of course Boris didn't become PM, and we found out that triggering a50 and Brexit were even more complex than even the majority of the most informed thought it would be.

A year on we have a minority government, a zombie prime minister, a government who don't really know what the concept of democracy, millions of EU citizens (who include British nationals) who face an uncertain future, the fear of the cliff edge, a huge scandal over inequality and Jeremy Corbyn appearing on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury within the hour.

The EU rules apply to how member governments treat citizens of other EU countries

The loophole that the UK used is that the rules don't specify how a country must treat its own citizens.

Maybe the EU thought it would be interfering in domestic policy to specify this - or maybe they never considered a country would be that daft to discriminate against its own citizens

BigChoc.

I am not in UK, so forgive me. I wonder how UK as a member of the EU could do this unilaterally. Still baffled!

Could we have an En Marche movement in the UK? I am disenchanted with the current options, and think Vince Cable is too old. Who could lead a new centrist party? Committed to social justice, without promising Utopias to young or old? Who recognises that businesses help pay the taxes for the services we expect but without allowing zero hours contracts to substitute for paying jobs? To have a sensible discussion about the medical choices available to the very aged on the NHS? To decide between selling off social housing or building more? What standard should new social housing be built to? Childcare? Education? What is a reasonable profit margin for energy companies?
You have opinions... Brexit hardly matters if the end result is an impoverished divided country that can't decide its priorities. We need a discussion about what they are, or should be.

BigChoc, cross post. Thanks for the clarification.

I wonder how this applies across the E27. I mean has any E27 country the same stance as Britain WRT its own citizens. If I had the energy I would look it up.

(Sunday Times Paywall) Ministers want Philip Hammond as caretaker prime minister

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/ministers-want-philip-hammond-as-caretaker-prime-minister-mrlvh0qb8?CMP=TNLEmail1189188_1993440

he is now being lined up to replace Theresa May as prime minister as part of an alliance with David Davis to deliver Brexit safely.

Ministers say he should be anointed leader before October party conference
as long as he vows to resign after two years
so someone else can lead the Tories into the next election.

One says the chancellor, who backed remain, backs himself for the role:
"He told me that if Theresa May could be prime minister, so could he."

Spreadsheet Phil's alleged bold talk will go down less like a swig of sweet sherry and more like a cup of cold sick with some eurosceptic MPs.

Dr Liam Fox today rejects the kind of "business-oriented" Brexit the chancellor has touted, telling The Sunday Telegraph "we have to deliver" on the promise to end free movement.

He's not the only displeased party.

Allies of Boris Johnson are concerned that a joint ticket of Hammond and Davis (potentially backed by Amber Rudd as a post-Brexit leader in waiting) would kill his ambitions,
while fans of Davis still want DD atop the ticket.

A UK citizen has to earn at least £18,200 to be allowed to bring a dependent into the UK as a resident. The same rule would not apply to a settled EU migrant, as I understand the current negotiating stance,

Spreadsheet Phil's alleged bold talk will go down less like a swig of sweet sherry and more like a cup of cold sick with some eurosceptic MPs.

How many of them are there? 40? 100 at max. That leaves 217 who think otherwise. So it's up to the eurosceptics to get their candidate elected. They failed last time, although they thought that they had got Theresa May where they wanted her. Sadly, the electorate didn't play ball.

David Allen Green‏****@davidallengreen
1. I happen to be a fan of @DavidDavisMP but I think he is perhaps approaching the Brexit negotiations incorrectly.
2. Before Brexit he was a highly effective chair of @CommonsPAC and took civil liberties seriously.
3. At the time of the vote he even was litigating at the ECJ with @tom_watson against May's new surveillance and data retention laws.
4. The irony being that Davis was on the day of his appointment to @DExEUgov seeking to quash an Act of Parliament by relying on EU law.
5. But his approach to EU deal-making has been wrong from beginning.
6. First example, from Brexit campaign. This is literally impossible under EU law.

David Davis‏ @DavidDavisMP
(1/3) Post #Brexit a UK-German deal would include free access for their cars and industrial goods, in exchange for a deal on everything else

David Allen Green‏****@davidallengreen
7. Germany cannot under EU law enter into such a deal with UK, even when UK leaves the EU. Davis did not know this.
8. Next example, also from the campaign. No comment needed.

David Davis‏***@DavidDavisMP*
The first calling point of the UK's negotiator immediately after #Brexit will not be Brussels, it will be Berlin, to strike a deal

David Allen Green‏****@davidallengreen

9. And then this, from after referendum but before appointment.
This has not even come close to happening.
Link:
www.conservativehome.com/platform/2016/07/david-davis-trade-deals-tax-cuts-and-taking-time-before-triggering-article-50-a-brexit-economic-strategy-for-britain.html

"So be under no doubt: we can do deals with our trading partners, and we can do them quickly. I would expect the new Prime Minister on September 9th to immediately trigger a large round of global trade deals with all our most favoured trade partners. I would expect that the negotiation phase of most of them to be concluded within between 12 and 24 months."

David Allen Green‏****@davidallengreen

10. We are now 9 months into that 12-24 month period for which he said there would be a "large round" of trade deals. There is not one.
11. And so on. Davis was good at @CommonsPAC and a sincere civil libertarian but he is consistently unrealistic about trade and EU deals.
12. When it became plain that EU were structuring the Brexit discussions in two phases, Davis threatened "row of the summer" to oppose this.
13. The opposition to sequencing did not last past day one of the negotiations. UK capitulation. The row-back of the summer.
14. And now Davis is still suggesting/threatening "no deal". But his record on being incorrect on trade deals means no credibility on this.
15. This a depressing thread to write, I wish it was otherwise. Remain a fan, but this not a good way to approach the Brexit deal.
/ends

Peter Dick‏*@pdick10*
"I think perhaps he is approaching the Brexit negotiations incorrectly". As Napoleon perhaps approached attacking Russia incorrectly.

David Waters‏*@DaveJWaters*

Davis is Brexit's heavyweight ballast. His failure will absolutely sink the ship. In this strictly limited sense I'm a Davis fan too.

When Brexiteers say that the EU is being unfair, it shows up not that the EU is unfair, but their own lack of understanding of the EU (and WTO. If EU countries are abstaining over the Chagos Islands, it doesn't take a genius to work out what is going to happen to the Falklands when WTO talks start. Brexiteers just haven't worked this out yet.)

'Unfair' is code for 'Shit I didn't realise that the EU worked like that' just as being 'clear' about something sounds the klaxon that what ever is said next, is a complete lot of bollocks and/or gibberish.

Unfair is presumably code for 'everything will be blamed on the 27'. Since the eurosceptic press have always written (IMO as deliberate policy) as if the UK was separate from Europe and not a member of the EU, they won't even have to change the autotexts they have set up.

sock I was told a couple of years ago by a former colleague of Indian descent in the UK, that even his Indian spouse had to provide evidence of sufficient income or capital , i.e. his income couldn't offset a spouse without funds.

And according to my Times link, DD's master plan is still "divide and conquer" - but individual EU countries legally can't do trade deals: only the EU as a whole can negotiate these

That is a basic principal and strength of any Union, like a Trade Union: collective bargaining

Maybe he is intending for these "bribed" countries to press for a good deal for the UK.
BUT
EU trade officials have said that even if the UK or E27 agreed to the other's terms now, without negotiating, there is no time for any trade deal, because there is no time to work out all the highly complicated technical details that accompany any deal and put them into a draft for approval by the negotiators and all governments involved.

Maybe yet more dreadful DD blunders
Aren't his civil servants able to brief him at all ?

DD doesn't look the listening type, bigchoc but he's great news for remain.

Following the recommendation earlier I caught up with the BBC documentary Brexit Means Brexit - The Unofficial Version. I don't use iPlayer but found it on youtube:

It is highly entertaining. The last part from 34:46 ( ) where arrogance and hubris starts to make the wheels fall off is just great.

"Aren't his civil servants able to brief him at all?"

He probably doesn't listen - just as City friends report that ministers in the Brexit dept don't listen to warnings of how disastrous a chaotic Brexit would be.

nauticant they were laughing then, they're not laughing now. Thanks for posting.

The poll with
LAB 46%
Con 41%

is from Panelbase
BUT
their final GE poll on 7th June gave the Tories an 8% lead instead of the 2% at the actual GE:
LAB 36%
Con 44%

I wonder if they have changed their methodology since then.
If not the real Labour lead could be 10%

However, don't get excited, folks. VI is very volatile atm.
So things could swing back within weeks if say Labour have a public row or major gaffe

BigChoc - that's right. There are very few immigration concessions for Commonwealth countries other than the dwindling UK Ancestry route. But if your colleague had been Spanish instead of British, it would have been much easier and cheaper to get a visa for his wife.

soda this odd situation arises because a Brit cit living in the UK is not exercising their right to free movement, whereas the German or Spaniard living in the UK is. Bonkers, I know

Enjoyed that Brexit means Brexit , cheers!
RedToothBrush Thu 08-Jun-17 22:00:27
WOOOOOOOAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Happy memories

On the perhaps labour lead of 10%,

The extreme right are going to have to work really hard to split up labour. AI didn't work, their phoney call centres didn't work, even their 3 times the funding of the labour campaign didn't work. Labour's more like a family, not a party, and when the chips are down, I have a feeling they'll pull together. But who knows, as you say bcf, these are volatile times.

The extreme right are going to have to work really hard to split up labour.

The problem is, I think, lots of fairly moderate people keep putting the Tories in. If they knew how the extreme right had taken over, they would probably be horrified, but on the whole, they are not people to question.

I wish Labour and the LibDems - well all the other parties except the DUP, would have a real push to get these people onside.

Apparently David Davis has said if he can't get an agreement on healthcare with EU for tourists etc he will pay for one anyway. Now if JC had said that he would have been accused of shaking that magic money tree again.

There are quite a few working class people who vote Tory because they believe well educated people are the ones most able to run the country. These are the older generation voters. Blooming idiots.

Bonny and Clyde are lurking again to use me as a pin cushion. Nite all peace to all.

sos I tend to have talky cats, not pin cushion cats DH took current one to vets because cat was talking so much. It's just his character. No idea where he gets it from.

Lol woman bonnie and Clyde are nurses, who are loading me up for the night.