Westminstenders: The beginning of the dictatorship and the end of Boris?

[RedToothBrush]

Brexit is being fought in the UK media and parliament on the premise that the EU is being difficult and obstructive.

The fallacy can not be understated.

What the UK fails to understand is the right of the EU to put their own interests before the UKs. It doesn't under that our demands cannot be met even if the EU wanted to for practical and legal reasons - not political ones because our understanding of the situation and law is so poor.

The net result is the slippage of the next phase of Brexit talks being pushed to Christmas by the EU due to lack of progress by the UK. Barnier is open to more regular and intense talks but this is bad news for the UK with the a50 clock ticking.

The main stumbling block is NI a with Barnier warning not to use the border as a way to test EU resolve. Brexit always about the NI border. The UK have never provided a solution to the EU that does not produce a hard border. The idea being pushed by the UK will create one despite claiming it won't. The reality is the only viable solutions are either staying in the single market and customs union or NI being granted special status and being different to the rest of the country. The former is opposed by the government, the later opposed by the DUP.

The DUP are getting a taste of their own medicine. They have been warned that Assembly Members might have pay frozen and if they don't reform Stormont they won't get their Billion Pound Booty. Plus Ian Paisley Jr just found a new scandal for the party.

May is trying to channel Venezuela by getting rid of democracy when it suits. The Great Repel Bill (aka as the Withdrawal Bill) faces it's challenge. The much feared Henry VIII in clause 9 are not only facing criticism from Remainers but also from the secretive crackpots of Tory Bastard Club (aka ERG). The TBC want hard cliff edge Brexit. May seems to support given her goodwill burning interference at the Home Office which seeks to discriminate against all foreigners and make them sign a register. The visa system and how it will attract much needed staff for the NHS makes the mind boggle.

The Repel Bill also could end the possibility of transition due to clause 6 which requires us to leave the ECJ. Given the May's ambition to make EU citizens display their stars in job applications this is totally unable to the EU. If it passes the chances of transition drop dramatically. Bye bye Smooth and Orderly.

Then there is the May-Bot paradox: the one were she gives a friendly speech to the EU and a nasty on to the Swivel Eyed Loon gathering. As if neither will be reported to the other audience.

On top of this May is attempting the Parliament Rigging Act as she has a 'majority Government'. Yep I know, this is the general election version of 'will of the people'. The Rigging Act seeks to stack parliamentary committees with Tory majorities so they can stop any bill they don't like getting anywhere need the main chamber this limiting the power of opposition to irrelevant. Sadly I think this one will get through due to maths of the HoC atm.

We shouldn't forget the role of the HoL though and the lack of a majority government (why do you think May is saying majority government? It's down to the Sewell convention and trying to make the case it applies when the argument is it doesn't for a minority government).

The other development is the rumours that Boris is for the boot. And Rees-Mogg might get a promotion.

my DDs were among those to be told to 'Fuck off back home' on the 24th o July 2016. To which my razor-sharp DD2 said' What, to Cambridge?' (where she was born
but that any child should have to hear any of this shite.
to you & your DD pointythings

Place marking

pointy poor dd's. I had the same, 'what, back to bedfordshire?' wasn't the answer they were looking for

Get well soon Mr Bigly

Just read the BBC version of Blair's proposals on immigration, having caught the end of him on Marr. Couple of thoughts.
1 I don't think they are permissible under EU Law and were rejected during DC's attempted renegotiation.
2 They run a serious risk of creating a 2 tier workforce where migrant workers have few rights and no incentive to register rather than working and living in the black economy.

What am I missing? In what sense would his proposals not be creating the right wing low reg economy he says he fears?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41216679

I think a lot of British-born people feel the same. Like 'our' country has been hijacked.
Yes me too.

I'm just getting to the end of Lion Feuchtwanger's The Oppermanns, written in 1934 and yes, the parallels which are developing make for very uncomfortable reading e.g. educated people, who had given loyal service to their country being treated as 'others'.

I drove past a big hotel the other night, which has two flagpoles and markets itself to an international clientele. In previous years it has displayed the EU flat alongside the Union Jack - now it's flying two Union Jacks.

As for the march - a good placard was one held by elderly lady saying 'Bugger Brexit' in cross-stitch. It might have said something equally pithy on the other side, but I didn't capture that.

pointy, hashi and especially your children - vile that they suffer this nationalist crap
British, especially English, attitudes are reverting to an ugly past

Some of those who want to rewind to pre-EC days really want to revert to when open racism & xenophobia was socially acceptable.

I saw that one, Peregrina did anyone get a picture of EU Elvis on a trike?

The best I saw was a terrific puppet of HRH in her EU hat with a sign saying "read my hat".
to LonelyPlanetMum thanks for the company!

DD and those Leavers who are expecting Germany to force a cake deal

• this is from July, but sums up mainstream contempt for the mess the UK has got itself into,

how the UK standing has plummeted :

The Laughing Stock of Europe

http://international.sueddeutsche.de/post/162123360980/the-laughing-stock-of-europe

Blair seems to be trying to put the genie back in the bottle - it won't work, chum.

The BBC says:
He says tougher immigration policies could "deal with the anxieties" that he says led to the Brexit vote - without the UK necessarily having to go through with it.

No, it won't make the slightest bit of difference to those racist bigots, who encouraged by the Referendum result, have declared Open Season on Muslims. Don't forget many of the highest Leave votes were in areas where people hardly ever see an immigrant.

Dorothy this is my take on it but please remember I'm french so my pov will be somehow biased.

I think that there has always been a lot of politically and scocially acceptable behaviour. So not being racist, being very tolerant to other people beliefs etc etc has always being what was the socially acceptable way of behaving. This was very clear when I arrived in the uk nearly 20 years ago. I found it refreshing coming from France (which I was finding very racist). I also found it left space for people to be who they wanted to be (let's say being vegetarian) as the onus was always on the others to be accommodating of those requests.

But on the other side, the British society is very rigid. I would put that down to the class system which puts everyone in a nice little box and where every move has to follow a certain guidelines.
This is going with a feeling that each group is better than the others (see looking down at people that are either above or lower than you, issue with bettering yourself etc...)

Both of those are not compatible.
You can't accept people that are doing things differently and be really tolerant AND expect people to strictly follow some social rules of appartenance to a group.
So I think that racism for example has always been there but was somehow masked by the social need to be looking tolerant.

What we see now the more rigid and intolerant aspect of British society that was tempered before by the social expectation of tolerance.
And that expectation of tolerance has been taken away in the last 7 years (since the Tories have come into power) by constant talk about immigrants that are doing so many awful things (real or not) and the referendum that has made OK to say that you don't like foreigners, what they do etc...
In particular, I'm seeing the referendum campaign as a big exercise in making intolerance OK, dividing people and pushing them against each other (them and us mentality).

Wondering what the British people on this thread think of that analaysis though. I might be well out of line there!

Ds has had the same comment too about 'going back home' to which he had a similar answer 'where? I have a British passport, Im born in this town and have always lived here. Where do you want me to go back to?'

Worth noting that the answer from the other teen was 'well then maybe not you, but your mum. She can fuck off back to where she comes from' :(:(

I haven't heard many more comments like this since then. But it feels like it's because NOW, it has become obvious so it's not even owth mentioning.

I also found it left space for people to be who they wanted to be (let's say being vegetarian) as the onus was always on the others to be accommodating of those requests.

I think this is the crux of the issue. There is always a balance in rights of freedoms of one person being accommodating to allow others to do exactly as they want. Austerity and the demonisation of anyone not in the winner's circle has led people to question the balance and who the net beneficiaries are.

I also don't think you can lump British or even English attitudes all into one. As a Scot Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem etc at the Proms has always left me cold - carrying an EU flag rather than a Union Jack just changes the Imperial master but not the Imperialist sentiment. Otoh I am equally put out by the inherent anti-English sentiment in adopting Flower of Scotland as a sporting anthem.

It's not just the govt that are so ignorant and poorly prepared for Brexit

• it's key HoC committees and MPs

Whether you are a Leaver or a Remainer, you deserve so much better than the disgraceful incompetence in public office of most of our elected politicians.

Deserve better than their actions making the country a laughing stock

• that's not what gets the best deal

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brexit-german-politicians-irish-british-disgrace-farcical-a7843526.html

Senior German politicians reportedly launched a scathing attack on their British counterparts, calling them a “disgrace” and labelling their response to Brexit “farcical”
during a meeting in the Bundestag.

Irish and German figures gathered at an Oireachtas delegation held by the German Parliament’s finance committee to discuss Brexit.

Fine Gael senator Ray Butler, who attended the meeting, said the German politicians were speaking after a recent visit to Westminster.

“They said they met the finance committee in London and they were shocked by the way they handled themselves,”
Mr Butler told the Sunday Independent.

“They said they were making it up as they went along and were very poorly prepared for Brexit.

“It was actually farcical, is what they said.
They came out of the meeting very bemused and annoyed.”

I think that's an interesting take, Optimist. I'm still clueless about what made it alright for English people to become so aggressive to anyone that they perceive as "foreign" (a few days after the referendum, my English husband was told to "Keep fucking running to your own country" because he was wearing an AC Milan top). Obviously the referendum was the trigger but the people who felt liberated by it to express these sorts of attitudes had made a very good job of disguising them in the years before.

The report by Tony Blair seems to have been received sympathetically at the Mail...

how that's totally right. This is about the English not the British as a whole.
I'm always forgetting how much difference there is between England, Scotland etc... (that was a quite recent discovery for me btw. The fact that gap in between is so big. I never thought it was such a major thing)

Regarding the march, I think the negative thing was less people than last time, but the positive thing was the strength and commitment to the benefits of remaining in the EU, and definitely more press coverage than last time.

Also randomly chatting to another person marching who turned out to be a Mumsnetter reinforced the immense benefits of what RTB and everyone does on here.

to Born to be quiet thanks for your company!

Lots of criticism of the British response to Irma from British tourists and territories.

British Tourists haven't been evacuated from St Martin - even though there was space with US transports out. They were refused as there was no agreement with the British Government.

Thomas Cook has been under fire for the situation in Cuba, but it has be asked where the British government was in that too.

Initially the plan for aid to the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos was to be via sea. It was only after there was outrage that it would take over a week that they did an airlift.

Tory MP Tom Tugendhat has been criticised for being a 'traitor' for voicing criticism for the lateness of British government response. He is former military so does know about this stuff. Michael Fallon has been busy going on about how there has been no delay this morning.

Anguilla has so far received MORE aid from the EU than from the British government even though its a British Overseas Territory. This will end after Brexit.

So yeah, our government is fucking useless at everything. Too busy squabbling and running around like headless chickens over Brexit.

I think you're sort of there eternal though it's not a wholly English or British issue. It exists in all parts. I do think there are people who are decent and tolerant, and there are those who never were but played along. They now feel free to voice this. Not that they can stand the label still so will often try to weasel out, like it's just banter therefore your issue or whether sticking to outdated racism definitions or claiming it's not racist because EU citizens are white (they aren't solely of course). But basically they're happy to say and excuse things they would have kept hidden before.

However, this was apparent pre referendum. The bravery kicked in then. The only thing the referendum changed was the legitimisation if it.

aeon.co/essays/the-end-of-a-world-of-nation-states-may-be-upon-us

Read this last night and thought some here would like it. My final OU essay was about the end of the nation state and how people will align along ideas rather than state borders. Social media enables that. There's good and bad about that, of course. But, in the meantime, I wonder if people will start to live/move to areas they feel more in tune with? I know if I was moving, I'd be looking at how the area voted. Ghettoisation of ideas?

Interesting article Swedish. In some ways chimes with my own anti-EU Superstate predisposition. To illustrate I would be happy with Scottish Independence outside the EU but not in the EU. However I may be persuaded that Scotland would work better with Federal States based around the old Regions of Strathclyde etc. In which case it makes more sense to Federalise the whole of the UK, broadly around the City mayor structure and leave the UK as is.

The other angle though is the illusion of Independence. I was doing some research on HS2 and its effect on Scottish Transport funding this morning. I saw it argued that there was a Barnet consequential via the English transport budget but didn't think this was the case. As far as I can ascertain it counts as a "UK project" with spin off benefits for the whole of the UK and as such far from Scotland benefiting from proportionate amounts to spend on its own railways it will actually be contributing to the cost of HS2 in the notional "GERs" calculation. In contrast Holyrood paid for wur new bridge out of the Scottish block grant, despite the obvious benefits for the "UK" oil industry.

So in short I think it is difficult to argue against the autonomy of the Nation State in favour of the autonomy of some smaller region or City.

twitter.com/IanDunt/status/906816820778344449
Twitter thread I can't c&p on Blair's latest

Interesting re possible ghettoisation. One of the things that drew me to outer London was that I always thought my kids could have the best of urban life with countryside nearby but be largely free of the faint of having a foreign grandparent and other part foreign family members. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. If I knew the result of the referendum, I wouldn't have looked at this area at all.

I like the idea of largely independent cities and regions, maybe in a loose confederation.

Peregrina I saw that too. One of the most heartening sights for me was watching 2 teenage girls spending nearly an hour having a deep discussion with two women in their 60's/70's and then all giving each other a huge hug.
It's really interesting how the Brexit narrative has subtly shifted- it seems to be taken as a given now that Leavers always said it was going to be hard to begin with but will be worth it in the end. I don't actually remember anyone saying that during the Referendum campaign- from what I recall, we were told that there might be a few teething problems but that Brexit was going to be brilliant pretty much straight away.
Now we're told that Leavers said it would be 10- 20 years before we see any benefit.
I don't know anyone on here or IRL who doesn't have criticisms of the EU. Even the most ardent remainers wouldn't say that it doesn't have its faults. Of course it does like any large organisation does.
We can't turn the clock back to a point where we never joined the EU. We did and surely anyone can see that reversing 40+ years of legislation is going to be deeply painful. I'm really struggling to see why some people think the EU is so terrible that they think that pain is 'worth it'.
Using the divorce analogy- i have been with DH for 21 years and married for 18 years. We have our problems and there has been the odd occasion when I have thought about leaving.
However, we respect each other, we have a huge amount of shared history including 3 children, we can still have a laugh together and we have a mortgage free house in London. Whilst our marriage isn't the happiest, I have concluded that staying is preferable to living in a bedsit on benefits.