Westminsterenders: The Ersatz ImitationThread

[OlennasWimple]

I am no RedToothBrush, so I'm not going to try to emulate her exception OP style.

Here, though, in the interests of carrying on our conversations about WTF is going on with Brexit and the weird political world we find ourselves in right now, is a sort of continuation thread

(Hurry back Red, we need you!)

www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/15452521.Nearly_a_thousand_documents_are_being_withheld_from_release_to_the_National_Archives_in_Kew/?ref=twtrec
Nearly a thousand documents are being withheld from release to the National Archives in Kew

Whitehall departments have refused to release sensitive historical documents on issues including the UK's military relationship with Saudi Arabia and a royal visit to the Middle East.

A record number of files were withheld from release to the National Archives, in Kew, raising concerns about the Government's approach to transparency.

Departments applied to withhold 986 documents from 1986 and 1987 which were due to be released, The Times reported.

The papers should have gone to the National Archives, and been made available for public inspection under the so-called 30-year rule, but officials can request that files stay secret if publication would undermine foreign relations, defence or security.

Andrew Marr wrote two novels pre Brexit called Head of State and Children of the Master. Weirdly prescient, worth a read for anyone who thinks there were financial motives behind the whole debacle.

then to reap the profits from chaos.

But they might find that they get ensnared in the chaos. Things do not always go as expected. As May has just found out.

I suspect that this analysis is correct, and she is going hell for leather for a hard Brexit, as though she never called the election, because she knows that this is her last chance. The tide is turning.

As MN often say: money gives you choices
helps you avoid / overcome problems & setbacks

Super rich money gives you super choices
Heads you win, tails someone else loses

Expert insight from Sir Ivan Rogers (pushed out former UK Permanent Rep to EU) giving evidence to HoC:

http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/exiting-the-european-union-committee/the-uks-negotiating-objectives-for-its-withdrawal-from-the-eu/oral/47657.html

Especially Q1076:

If you are a third country in EU jargon and doctrine,

first of all you have to be on the list of countries permitted to export into the EU market.

Secondly, individual firms then have to be approved,
and thirdly individual consignments have to be cleared before the goods or services are allowed on the EU market.

That applies to all non‑member states.
That is my point in response to what I perceive to be the argument, “Why is not WTO‑only fine?

We have moved to a world outside, but they all know that we are the same beast the day after as we were the day before”.

They would say, “No, the world does not work like that and our legal order does not work like that.
If there is no agreement with us, you move into a legal void.

It is not that you are a once‑member state;
you have become a third country, and unless and until you have a preferential agreement enabling you to trade on preferential terms, you cannot trade on preferential terms”.

This is where I part company with some of what I am reading on WTO-only.
No other major player trades with the EU on pure WTO‑only terms

It is not true that the Americans, Australians, Canadians, Israelis or Swiss do.

They strike preferential trade deals where they can, but they also strike more minor equivalence agreements:
financial services equivalence agreements, veterinary equivalence agreements, mutual conformity of assessment agreements.

The EU has mutual conformity of assessment agreements with the US, Canada, Israel, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand, and more.
I was part of negotiating some with the US in 1998. It is not true to say that EU‑US trade is governed solely by the WTO.

So Treeza says we are not gong to pay the bill and honour our pre existing commitments?

I like the dry humour in Tom Peck's article about this, that "there are few things more reassuring, in these uncertain times, than the Prime Minister saying something is not going to happen, to put one’s mind at rest that it definitely will."
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-eu-europe-breakthrough-theresa-may-divorce-bill-david-davis-what-it-really-means-a7880741.htmll_

It's just like Hinkley Point, the dementia tax, self employed national insurance contributions, new grammar schools,energy price caps and the snap election.
" You hardly need to pause very long to consider whether a person who can pay £1bn to the DUP for a few parliamentary votes she arguably does not need will be able to find £36bn, spread over many years and equal to current obligations....."
So you have interpret Treeza's announcements as meaning the opposite. I'm hoping this means that in fact exit does not mean exit..

BigChoc - I suspect Richard North is 100% correct in his focus on who benefits from Brexit, and why a hard Brexit is likely.

Wrt Legatum - how interesting to see Steve Baker's name crop up yet again. The man certainly gets around. He is the MP who is funded by Richard Cook and the Constitutional Research Council, the shadowy entity that funneled half a million £ via the DUP to the Leave effort.

Another of the Legatum Institute directors is Toby Baxendale. He is also on its board of trustees. As to other interests, he was director, alongside co-director Steve Baker, of the now defunct Leadsom4Leader, a limited company set up to support Andrea Leadsom's Conservative Party leadership bid.

Baxendale is also co-founder, again with Steve Baker, of the Cobden Centre, "a home for Austrian School economics in the UK". He also set up the Hayek Visiting Fellowship at the London School of Economics. He has been a significant donor to the Conservative Party.

Leadsom is obv a useful idiot in the most literal sense of the phrase.

The picture one gets of Legatum, therefore, is of an exceptionally well-endowed think-tank with fingers in many pies and strongly networked with other think-tanks and the media. With offshore finance, though, this is redolent of foreign interference in UK politics, by a company which seems to attract dubious publicity, and critical appraisal.

The greatest concern, though, comes from reading the Legatum website. Having invested heavily in Russia and developing countries, the business speciality is moving into markets at times of crisis where assets are mispriced.

Back in the Gilded Age, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst allegedly told artist Frederic Remington, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."
Apocryphal or not, it was believable.

www.li.com/about/legatum-fellows
Any of these names or boards or institutes or think tanks, etc., ring any bells?

There is a guy from Australia on R4 right now telling us all to just stop worrying so much and learn to love the Brexit. Apparently it will all be fine.

Wrt Legatum - how interesting to see Steve Baker's name crop up yet again.
It's been an interesting ride, watching little steve and the crc and their wee friends doing what they do.
Paul Mason's article in guardian looks forward to linked issues with forthcoming Pence administration.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/07/trump-out-in-year-usa-problems-just-beginning-paul-mason

(paywall) Britain ‘absent’ from Brexit talks due to Tory divisions, says former diplomat

< so much for hopes that DD / Baldrick had a cunning plan >

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/britain-absent-from-brexit-talks-due-to-tory-divisions-says-former-diplomat-gd22s6w2

The UK has been “a bit absent” from Brexit negotiations because cabinet divisions have made it impossible to agree a clear strategy, the former head of the diplomatic service has warned.

Sir Simon Fraser, who was the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office until 2015 said the negotiations have not begun promisingly and there was an urgent need to show Britain was “ready to engage”.

Sir Simon added that transitional arrangements covering the period after the UK leaves the European Union in March 2019 would be vital because there is “no way” that a deal on the future relationship with the bloc will have been finalised by then.

“The negotiations have only just begun,
I don’t think they have begun particularly promisingly, frankly, on the British side,”
he told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour.

“We haven’t put forward a lot because, as we know, there are differences within the Cabinet about the sort of Brexit that we are heading for and until those differences are further resolved I think it’s very difficult for us to have a clear position,” he said.

The government is expected to publish further “position papers” setting out its views on customs arrangements and the Northern Irish border in the coming weeks.
Sir Simon said that this was important to help demonstrate the British team was “ready to engage”.

“I think so far we haven’t put much on the table apart from something on the status of nationals, so we are a bit absent from the formal negotiation,” he said.

“I think we need to demonstrate that we are ready to engage on the substance so that people can understand what is really at stake here and what the options are.”

Tory divisions
So tories have no unified parliamentary party/brexit and their membership is going through the floor.

I don't think DC's appearance at posh festival will fix tory grass roots vacuum in support either.
Sky Views: Hacienda Generation threat to Tories
news.sky.com/story/sky-views-hacienda-generation-threat-to-tories-10977698 I am so impressed with Faisal Islam and the way Sky has been covering recent events.
Certainly a lot of young people looking forward to the tory conference in Manchester, but not as attendees.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/07/donald-trump-russia-dossier-christopher-steele-devin-nunes
Wonder if Comey and MI6 are keeping in touch, just in case....

Thanks for the link, woman. I don't have Sky but have been very impressed by all that I have managed to see of Faisal Islam (and, on a purely personal level, I love the idea that I'm part of the Hacienda Generation ).

Essentially, Brexit brought US-style culture wars to the UK. The election was a chance to settle a winner. Surely now, the only possible solution for political parties which wish to thrive, is a compromise.

Another reason to hope Murdoch's Sky takeover isn't allowed.

V interesting from Faisal Islam:

According to the YouGov post election poll in 2015, 36% of voters in their 30s voted Conservative, against 34% for Labour under Ed Miliband.
The same pollster had that figure at an incredible 55% for Labour and 29% for the Conservatives in 2017.

What could possibly have led to such a huge swing in just two years?

Jeremy Corbyn supporters will say it is the Labour leader. Conservatives say tuition fees.
But the bigger factor is clearly the issue the PM said she fought the election on - Brexit.

The Conservatives saw the largest swings against them in Remain majority areas, such as all the way along the M4 motorway from London to Bristol and Cardiff.
Between 60 and 75% of under 45s voted Remain.

< imo, there will forever be bitterness about post-Brexit consequences towards the older generation - who did NOT all vote Leave, but most did >

It would be much better to blame the political party whose catfight brought the country to this, rather than a generation of voters.
However, Divide & Rule has worked so well for the rightwing, in diverting attention of those beimg shafted

What comes after Trump - the oligarchs' plan B
(if he is indeed removed - it's rightly v difficult to impeach a POTUS)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/07/trump-out-in-year-usa-problems-just-beginning-paul-mason

"A brief list of the “known unknowns” suggests Donald Trump’s presidency will not survive 12 months."

imo, there will forever be bitterness about post-Brexit consequences towards the older generation - who did NOT all vote Leave, but most did

The bitterness was already there. Brexit has added to it. My DS constantly reminds me and DH how our generation has shafted his. As though we were personally responsible, when we most certainly weren't. Nor did we vote Leave, thankfully. I was tempted to, to give Cameron a kick in the teeth, but I am glad I didn't, I couldn't have forgiven myself if I had done!

the oligarchs' plan B
It's why the MI6/Steele/Comey stuff is important. Public institutions, separation of powers and civil services are now the front line in civil defence against this malarkey. I can see that EU leaders are pro active defending civil liberties and democracy, I can only hope that there's cross/atlantic liaison on the defence of them by what remains of the civil services in US and UK. red's posts yesterday about documents which should now be available for freedom of information access being withheld are very concerning.

when we most certainly weren't.
Karl Marx would have had a righteous chuckle at all this intergenerational divide and rule nonsense. Class and capital is, was and will be the fault line on which all power is allocated. The alt right reflect age demographics across the board, they have their power because of class and capital.

The UK made a net payment of roughly £156m a week to the European Union in 2016/17, the lowest level for five years.

Treasury figures suggest the total amount for the 12 months to March 2017 was £8.1bn.

Before the application of the rebate, the UK's gross contribution to the EU budget in 2016/17 was £16.9bn, or around £325m a week.

The rebate in 2016/17 was £4.8bn, which when taken from the gross contribution gives a figure of £12.2bn.

Once the EU's payments to the UK public sector are subtracted, this gives the final figure of £8.1bn, or around £156m a week.

The precise amount Britain pays the EU is difficult to calculate.

This is because EU payments that are made directly to the private sector, such as universities and research organisations, are not included in the figures from the Treasury.

news.sky.com/story/britain-made-weekly-net-payment-of-around-156m-to-eu-in-201617-10978129

Does this mean that leavers will need a considerably smaller bus?

I think they'll need to swap it for a scooter

Off from work. Binge watching my recording of Gardeners' World. A refuge from all of this.

Posted this on the other thread, but thought it bears repeating. A lot.

mobile.twitter.com/jonnymorris1973/status/894842103158714368

Thing I don't understand about Brexit. Govt says we're leaving the EU, single market, free movement area etc in April 2019. 20 months away.

But if that's happening, why isn't Dover a big building site? We will need to massively increase customs capacity to check stuff in & out. We will (at least) need to have increased border checks in Northern Ireland. So why aren't the government buying up sites along the border?

We will need new agencies up and running on April 1 2019 for air safety, maritime safety, chemicals, medicines, disease prevention etc. So where are the buildings being built, bought or leased for these new agencies? Where are the job advertisements for these new agencies?

And so on. All the stuff that should be happening if we're leaving the EU in 2019 isn't actually happening. There are two possible reasons.
1) Our government is incompetent or 2) They don't expect us to leave the EU in 2019 cos they hope an excuse to delay/cancel will turn up.

The mystery is why all the 'Brexiteers' aren't kicking up a fuss about this. Surely they should be asking why this stuff isn't happening?

Ah elements
Not sure it's a big mystery.
Brexiteers seem to think the eu are so desperate to deal with us they'll roll over and give us everything, whilst simultaneously pointing out that the eu won't negotiate anything ever (hence Cameron/Blair/et als) failures. Unicorns init?