Westminstenders: The Maddest of May and Boris's Dare

[RedToothBrush]

Boris Johnson just dared May to fire him.

That's what his little rant about £350 million buses is.

Meanwhile its been pointed out that HMRC literally are incapable of handling a no deal and can only cope with an EEA / EFTA deal with no tariffs.

And given how good and on time the government are with computer systems even in a best case scenario are extremely unlikely to crack it in time.

Which makes Hammond's talk of a civil contingence plan, look, well half arsed and lacking.

We also wouldn't have planes able to fly to Europe under a no deal as we would no longer be part of Open Skies. This could leave thousands stranded. But no biggie there.

Meanwhile if the Leave Alliance have things right, May is about to serve our one year notice on leaving the EEA making all these things a reality.

Which is less like shooting yourself in the head and more like shooting yourself in the head, chest, foot, arm, leg and face (for a second time), whilst being run over at the same time.

But hey, Boris Johnson has it sussed in his 10 point plan. Especially the point where he says Brexit will be a success.

If you call success ending democracy, becoming a dictatorship, starving everyone, bankrupting the country and causing civil unrest.

Rule Britannia.

I am losing the will to live with this Govt. Incompetent, shambolic... an endless catalogue of disasters. Don't have the energy to list them, discuss them or even quote from this article, which beggars belief:

www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-latest-triggering-article-50-was-historic-unforgivable-blunder-says-former-vote-leave-chief-a3637696.html

Sorry. I'm so tired of it now.

Say what Jacob? The UK was the 8th biggest manufacturing country in 2015?

You mean over 12 months before the referendum?

Be sure to tell us the figures for 2016 and 2017.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41271028
One slightly baffling element of the government's Brexit strategy is that it insists it is working on preparing for a "No Deal" scenario. But I am not sure that they really are. A lot of memos are being circulated, but not a lot beyond that. Britain does not seem to be taking the idea of No Deal very seriously. The government is not currently behaving like it is plausible.
BBC article that details some of the work required for a 'no deal' and that none of it is being done.
Unless the government starts allocating resources to prepare for the parts of a clean exit in 2019 that it can control, no-one will seriously believe they're considering it. It makes a transition of some kind - on whatever terms it is offered - much more likely.

I read that March 2018 is the latest possible date on which prep for Customs infrastructure must start.

Seems far too late - but maybe with emergency powers Act to take over land etc

March 2018 for customs is too late. Government IT systems always run over at the best of times. There is no way they can get the staff required and implement it even if they started tomorrow. That's the reality.

DH works in IT industry and thinks it laughable. It has widespread skill shortage of anyone of a decent level and the referendum has made it noticeably worse. Well paying and prestigious companies can't hire enough people. How is the government going to compete?

I'd like to see the government go down this route and even let HMRC try. It's a recipe for disaster and will leave someone very red faced indeed.

Imho, I think they would struggle to get it done in time with a 2 year transition phase.

It will be fun to watch the inevitable cock ups unfold on this one, that is for sure. There's plenty of column inches to be generated.

March 2018 is way too late for anything involving infrastructure, IT or physical. That stuff takes years - in the business that I'm in, it's a given that large projects take 7-10 years to come to fruition. I think this is broadly true of most large infrastructure projects.

I think the reason that March 2018 is bandied about is because it's the date by which businesses will need to have made their Brexit plans (coincides with end of financial year for most, and the finalisation of budgets for FY2018-2019). If there is no government plan in sight, then businesses will begin to put in place their contingency plans, which may involve pulling investment and transferring production to the EU.

And remember that when it comes to customs, the UK's infrastructure is only half the story. EU member states - Ireland, France, the Netherlands - will also have to invest very significant sums of money in new facilities. There is absolutely no way they will do this until the end Brexit point is clear.

Me too Hester
Me too

Likewise. I can live with the referendum result and the fact that it must be respected. But this government seems to be bringing a whole load of avoidable problems on itself. They won't get the blame of course. That will all go to the Labour Party and the EU.

Im tired and depressed about it because I'm convinced this is all going to enslave us ordinary people further. Even Radio 4 'Thought for the Day' (not something I used to listen to) has started to sound seriously political. Yesterday Revd Sam Wells talked about how our growing Freedom is now being encroached upon by encroaching Slavery. How 'high-ups' on the TV tell us things are flourishing and we ask if they're living in a different country... Really interesting - worth a listen:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00szxv6/episodes/downloads

(Tuesday episode)

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/20/saboteurs-tory-hard-brexit-eu-boris-johnson-theresa-may
The real saboteurs are the Tory fantasists backing hard Brexit
Faced with the serious work and compromise that exiting the EU requires, many leavers are opting for fantasy, bombast and obstruction instead

There is a better distinction. Some Tories have moved on from the question of what needs doing – the referendum answered that with the single word “leave” – and are applying themselves to the problem of how it might be done: how to protect industries that rely on the single market; how to organise the Irish border; how to support agriculture without EU subsidy. Others shrink from that challenge. They find comfort in the saccharine simplicity of restating the original cause. “Hard” Brexit is the place to which some Tories retreat to avoid getting their hands dirty with compromise. If things go wrong, they can blame the pragmatists for sullying the dream.

The prime minister wasted a year indulging that tendency. One May loyalist describes frustration in cabinet committees when trying to get radical Brexit ministers to focus on detail. Every obstacle is belittled as a symptom of weak faith; every workaround is treated as a trap laid by unrepentant Europhiles seeking to abort the whole thing. No assurance by ex-remainers that they have accepted the referendum is trusted. This leads to a vicious cycle: the only people in government prepared to engage with the question of how Brexit might work are those who didn’t vote for it, which reinforces the zealots’ suspicion that the “softies” are closet saboteurs.

And

Reality is coming on hard and fast. May’s true allies in confronting it are the people who warned all along that the impact would hurt. But she has a cabinet packed with people who insist that the collision is avoidable.

May can have all the power and control she wants. It still won't mean we have a 'smooth and orderly' exit. Especially one which involves leaving the customs union or single market and certainly not at speed with a crash out.

That way lies economic destruction and civil unrest of some form. Even making laws to prevent that and having ration cards and having the army on the streets is unlikely to prevent it.

She might give it a try, but she's a fool if she does.

Enslaving in a situation where there are labour shortages in certain skills, health care removed, benefits cut completely and massive job cuts in other areas? Which leave people unable to feed their families.

Na. Not the right cocktail. Not the right splits in the population.

The right breeding ground for a further revolution, but not enslavement. Not of Brits anyway.

A nice increase of exploitation and increase of illegal immigration of foreigners mind...

The Today programme finally did a segment about the dangers of food shortages after (a hard) Brexit due to delays at the border.
I just emailed them to ask when they were going to do a segment on potential medicine shortages (I rely on medication produced in the EU, and literally would not function properly without it - not enough to work and lead a normal life).

If things go wrong, they can blame the pragmatists for sullying the dream.

This is the thing that gets my goat and we see that frame of mind from Leavers on here too (see zillions of threads about changing of minds). They're resolute in their certainty that Brexit is going well, and thus far nothing has shaken their faith. Anything less than glowing is simply Project Fear, and there is no doubt that it will all be worth it in The End.

Yet I'm fairly certain (assertions of multiple educational qualifications and raw intellectual power aside) that none of them are the actual people working at the coal-face within the civil service, or preparing IT infrastructure, or recruiting customs officers, or preparing contingency plans for multinational companies, etc etc.

What makes me think that? Quite simply, not a one of our regular Leavers has ever acknowledged any detailed question about Brexit (that's when they acknowledge at all) with anything more than "We don't know what will happen yet/ you don't have a crystal ball... I can't possibly find the energy to spend on thinking about this thing that is supposedly so terribly important to me... I won't worry my pretty little head about that until we know everything in X years' time... then I'll take a view "

There's always plenty of energy thought, to complain endlessly on the internet about Remoaners being nasty bullying traitors talking Britain down and not getting behind Brexit and not having faith and oppressing their opponents.

The spectator index @ spectators sex
BREAKING: Spanish authorities have raided the headquarters of the Catalan government

Jasmin Mujanovic @ jasminmuj
Wait on confirmation from actual news source. But if true, major and dangerous overreach by Madrid that will only stoke further tensions.
Even the most stable democratic regime is only a handful of unexpected episodes away from chaos. This is a prime example. Very worrying
In 70s/80s, Spain & Yugoslavia popular for comparative studies; regional & communal cleavages, exp w authoritarianism, exp w conflict etc.

I expect this to be confirmed as consistent with other action already taken.

Keep your eyes on this. This story has huge implications.

The reply to what's going to happen to NI and the not my problem responses said it all didn't it?

It's remarkable how many people think it will just 'sort itself out'.

It's like all the people I've come across in the workplace who abdicate responsibility shut and say "not my department".

The issue with most leavers I know is that they expect others to implement the referendum result. So when they say that locals should replace doctors, nurses, farm workers who are leaving, they mean other people, not themselves. When they say someone needs to sort out the customs infrastructure, science funding, farm subsidies etc., they mean other people. This is the key problem with Brexit, and why it's going so badly.

Anyone who is or was in IT back in the late 90s should be able to recall the Y2K work. The organisation I was in spent at least 3 solid years work on this. Ditto DH's organisation. It cost a lot of time and money. We also had to hunt around for people who knew COBOL, to see if systems could be adapted or if they had to be scrapped. Of course, in some cases we used it as an opportunity to upgrade systems, which we would have soldiered on with for a few years. Then with new systems in place, there had to be extensive staff training in e.g. Finance depts. so that they could work the new systems.

So take HMRC alone - which is almost certainly as complex as that work was. Did they start in 2016 - well, of course not because the Referendum hadn't happened. Are firms which import and export now gearing up for the new changes? No because the Government doesn't think they need to know. At this is the party which prides itself on being good for business? But some Leavers assure us that it will all be alright!

Well paying and prestigious companies can't hire enough people. How is the government going to compete?

With emergency powers anything is possible. You can commandeer land, machines, money, food, water, labour ...

Only a traitor would even consider not complying.

It worked for Stalin ...

I'm not in IT, but I remember so many people complaining the Y2K disaster never happened - an earlier Project Fear etc

Well of course it didn't happen - because of years of hard work to prevent it; that much I knew

I just emailed them to ask when they were going to do a segment on potential medicine shortages

In the absence of information to the contrary, I'm going to suggest that we are beyond the word "potential". Some medicines are no longer available.

Paywalled at The Times:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/blustering-brexiteers-seem-set-on-taking-the-most-damaging-path-cvvkqjngs?shareToken=5a6ae2b8266af34ca0b2116b7bc5ab22

Britain’s budget contribution, net of EU spending in the UK, is just over 1 per cent of all UK public spending. Yet I still hear people say that the loss of this amount, spread across the other 27 members, would somehow plunge the EU into crisis.

More than that, the idea of a fiscal windfall as a result of Britain not paying in is the worst kind of fantasy. It has always been clear that the net effect of leaving the EU will, through a slower growing economy, be to make the public finances worse...

Sorry LH, forgot you had already raised the issue of medications.

The horrid 2-year persecution by the Home Office of a Japanese woman married to a Polish man

Missed this earlier BigChoc This is what we British are now. Hounding and harassing ordinary, law-abiding people and then doing the cowardly "oh it was just a leetle error" if caught out. How brave and admirable.

Still, I suppose this situation is exactly what some of our Leaver friends are in support of, the ones who say they wanted "equal" treatment of EU and non-EU migrants. Even-handed and non-racist harassment.

HMRC has the particularly thorny problem around the new IR35 rules which have driven contractors away in droves.

Unpatriotic though it may be, I would need a hell of an uplift in rates if I were to work for HMRC. Although I would consider it. A lot of people I know wouldn't.