Westminstenders: Boom. The Brexit Backlash starts to hit.

[RedToothBrush]

So it turns out that immigration figures that stated students overstayed were wrong. The home office knew this. And sat on it. Since 2015. Under Theresa.

That smells a bit doesn't it?

Imagine it: "Let's do lunch Paul. I'll cover up and give you a nice immigration story for your front page. In return, crown me PM."

Then tonight BOOM. Labour look like they have made a move. Soft very swishy Brexit. Even less brexity than the Beano Brexit that the Tories have been trying to announce on the quiet over the summer whilst Brexiteers are on holiday.

amp.theguardian.com/global/2017/aug/26/labour-calls-for-lengthy-transitional-period-post-brexit
Labour makes dramatic shift on Brexit and single market
Party opens clear divide with Tories, with support for free movement and paying into EU budgets for up to four years

Labour is to announce a dramatic policy shift by backing continued membership of the EU single market beyond March 2019, when Britain leaves the EU, establishing a clear dividing line with the Tories on Brexit for the first time.

In a move that positions it decisively as the party of “soft Brexit”, Labour will support full participation in the single market and customs union during a lengthy “transitional period” that it believes could last between two and four years after the day of departure, it is to announce on Sunday.

This will mean that under a Labour government the UK would continue to abide by the EU’s free movement rules, accept the jurisdiction of the European court of justice on trade and economic issues, and pay into the EU budget for a period of years after Brexit, in the hope of lessening the shock of leaving to the UK economy. In a further move that will delight many pro-EU Labour backers, Jeremy Corbyn’s party will also leave open the option of the UK remaining a member of the customs union and single market for good, beyond the end of the transitional period.

Why would Labour suddenly do this? It's not just because of the youth vote. What about their leave voters?

Faisal Islam on the subject:
2. On Labour Leavers is very very interesting and involves quite the psephological judgement re the election....
...the calculation appears to be that Labour Leave voters had the chance to vote for Theresa May's brand of Brexit, and bar 5 seats, said No
Was that because Lableave voters were already signalled "hard Brexit"? Or many millions such voters much more concerned about other things?

Have Labour been polling their voters on this?

Theresa has also apparently set her sell by date: Friday 30th August 2019.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/theresa-sets-date-shell-quit-11061894.amp
Theresa May sets date she'll quit as Prime Minister - giving herself time to see Britain through Brexit

The longer the transition and the squishier it gets, the more the more you wonder.

Mr Barnier will enjoy his coffee and newspapers tomorrow as he prepares for round two of Brexit talks starting next week.

The question on his mind most: Will David Davis remember to bring his notes this time?

Sorry, yes, I don't know why I typed prettybird!

One reason I typed the anecdote about life outside the larger cities in some European countries was because I am convinced that some Leavers don't really 'get' what a threat to the economy a 'cliff edge' exit is, and what that might lead to in real terms.

I remember a Brexit person on here responding to the worry that hard Brexit could lead to a fall in GDP of 10%. The response was that the UK economy could take the hit - it would just put the UK in the tier of the lower-economy EU countries.

Life in the lower-tier EU countries, if you are outside the big cities, can be quite different to what we have come to expect in the UK. Having seen it, I'm not sure I'd want to be living somewhere far from the SE, or a najor city.

Sorry. That is anecdote. And a bit of a rant. It just really, really annoys me. And there is a thread elsewhere which has pressed my buttons!

no worries pretty bird and cat. Sounds like a really nice new children's story.

I think our missing remainer dad was about to spill some more beans on BJ, and it's an agreed shutdown of BJ. 'Throwing a shiny coin' strategy, for remainers. BJ's a symptom, not the disease.

Life in the lower-tier EU countries, if you are outside the big cities, can be quite different to what we have come to expect in the UK.

Imagine only having water 2 hours a day ?
Imagine only being able to rely on electricity 90% of the time.
Imagine having to use cylinders exclusively for gas.

Polly Toynbee writes so well what we have spent threads saying...

Can she last? These days, no one sensible makes political predictions. Wavering gnomically between her party’s warring factions, she has no friends, nor does she build alliances, either in her cabinet or among any of the 27 EU leaders who hold her – and our – fate in their hands.

Her deputy, her chancellor and her home secretary are all remainers, determined to hold her back from Brexit disaster. Why she leans so far to her Brexit wing is a mystery, but until now she has given them the whip hand. By failing to slap down Boris Johnson for his fatuous “go whistle” jibe, she sanctioned her foreign secretary to stir maximum anger among EU countries who must pay in for every pound less we contribute.

Ineptitude? Dithering? Fear of Brexiteer ferocity? She remains an enigma – though not a very interesting one. The worry is that beneath the sphinx-like exterior there is no great riddle, not much in brain, vision, ingenuity or political grasp. Her cabinet colleagues were always bemused by her obstinacy, even in the face of overwhelming factual evidence. Her refusal to take foreign students out of immigration numbers has been utterly perplexing: sticking to it despite new proof that they are indeed students who go home, not migrants, defies all political sense."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/29/relaunch-ship-theresa-may-doomed

Shame our daily mail random quote generator isn't here today. I'm bored out of my skull in a&e waiting for DD to be seen. My dd that is. I've not lamped Davis or anything.

Hello everyone,
Glad to see you all enjoying the robust debate, we have been through the thread now and removed anything we considered as guideline breaking. Allons-y, and if at all possible could the goady effery be kept to a minimum? Thanks for all the reports.

In future, when a GF joins us, I am going to keep screen shots of the pages, as some of the posts that have been deleted, I don't recall as having breached the MN Talk guidelines

Sounds good prettybird

www.independent.co.uk/voices/economics-morality-nobel-prize-laureates-oliver-hart-jean-tirole-amoral-drift-a7915366.html

After a long history of avoiding the morality factor, economists are beginning to include it in their work

This is a useful rebuke to the charge that by analysing human behaviour as narrowly self-interested, the economics profession is implicitly encouraging people to behave in that selfish way

And this work is also a useful rebuke to the charge that by analysing human behaviour as narrowly self-interested the economics profession is implicitly encouraging people to behave in that selfish way, that the axioms of classical economics have a “normative” impact on society.

And in a sense this is a return to older ways of thinking. Seventeen years before he wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776 Adam Smith produced The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it,” wrote the revered father of economics.

I have to admit that I can't recall anything goady.

@MNHQ: We're mainly Remainers here. We can handle the truth. We don't need to be protected from differing opinions !!!!

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

aka "Enlightened Self Interest"

Someone posted the Simon Jenkins article, it provoked some excellent letters in reply www.theguardian.com/education/2017/aug/28/just-speaking-english-wont-get-us-very-far-in-the-world

Don't mnhq sometimes delete posts that quote ones that get deleted? At least that's what I'm assuming happened in some of these cases.

Good responses. Maybe it was written to provoke? I don't know Simon Jenkins. Anglo Saxon linguistic and cultural chauvinism and isolation has got us into this trump/brexit pickle.

sorry post that was to whatwouldrondo^

that post

woman He is one of Journalism elder statesmen. I think he edited the Times and Standard in the distant past, and yes given to being provocative. I feel strongly about this. Far too many with SpLDs get told not to study languages (or even essay subjects at all) and therefore have whole avenues of self development closed off......

politicalscrapbook.net/2017/08/ridiculed-tories-launch-activate-uk-youth-grassroots-campaign/

Oh wow! That activate Twitter account is pretty fun. Their latest "meme" attempt attached for your enjoyment. If you a on Twitter I recommend looking them up just for the amusing responses to their attempts at twittering.

twitter.com/ActivateBritain/status/902523545015775232

Though the person who set it up is only 17 apparently, so top marks to effort and all. Bless their cottons.

Angela Merkel: we cannot hold our tongues on risk to rule of law in Poland

German chancellor says EU fears over Polish reforms giving justice minister right to fire judges must be taken seriously

“This is a serious issue because the requirements for cooperation within the European Union are the principles of the rule of law,” Merkel told a press conference in Berlin. “However much I want to have very good relations with Poland ... we cannot simply hold our tongues and not say anything for the sake of peace and quiet.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/29/angela-merkel-poland-judicial-reforms-courts
I love Merkel.( couldn't imagine myself saying that a few years back)

Thank goodness for the EU.

Woman : ds (age 17 in 2 weeks ) simultaneously idolises Bernie Saunders and Angela Merkel

My teens (going into equivalent of years 13 and 11) are also big Merkel fans. DS has taken German as a third foreign language just in case Le Pen ever gets into power.

I think they are also sympathetic to the Sanders message, but the French election innoculated them to a certain extent against the populist left. They were both disgusted by the failure of Melenchon and his supporters to take a clear stand against anti-semitism.

Snap misti and prettybird* on ages of kids! My elder likes Sanders, my younger likes football.

I think the deleted posts from the GF were about those of us who are expats, either E27 or UK.
Fair enough.