Westminstenders: Beano or Bust

[RedToothBrush]

The last week has seemingly been eventful but not in the way that's on the surface.

It's what's going on behind the scenes and the little comments in less high profile speeches that's more telling.

On the one hand the Norths think the May speech is a laying down "an offer" that the EU can not accept, in order to set up a no deal situation.

On the other hand Telegraph Journalist Peter Foster thinks there things going on in Brussels with the EU set to compromise in someway and help May present a deal acceptable to the British. You have to wonder whether the "presentational" stuff is about a deal to essentially be in the EU but not in the EU. A Brexit Existing in A Name Only. Beano.

It's difficult to tell, and it will come down to brinkmanship over timing. For both a deal and for the Repel Bill as the two sides in parliament try to push things to their limit for their own ends.

In this vacuum of uncertainty CBI and their "arch enemies" the TUC have put out a joint statement saying no deal is nuts and will screw every one and the way EU cits have been treated has been dreadful.

As it stands it does look like May is serious about a deal and Davis is also acting in this way. Johnson and Hannan have launched their Institute for Free Trade (at the foreign office breaking ministerial code, but hell there's no consequences these days anyway cos May dare not let Johnson off the Brexit hook) in retaliation to try and retell the Brexit story as always being about free trade rather than racist. Unfortunately leavers seem to have bust that by admitting they are considerably more racist than Remainers by their own admission.

Then there's Trump and Bombardier. Just as Brexiteers are pushing for this closer relationship with the US in trade, despite May personally lobbying Trump he fucks her over slapping 220% tariff on Bombardier and putting the future of 4000 jobs at risk. This was inevitable as Trump fucks everyone for his own gain. The US won't ride to the aid of the British capitalists. They'll just eat them alive.

This week sees an important vote by the European Parliament on Brexit red lines. One of the votes states that the UK has to either stay in the customs union and internal market or NI has to have a special arrangement and stay in the customs union and the internal market in order to protect the EUs border integrity. Neither is compatible with what the Cons and the DUP have said they want.

It's also the Tory Party conference.May's big speech, in which she must throw red meat to the swivel eyed loons on right, is on Weds. There are of course, no debates at ConParty because, well, they can't behave like good little children without supervision. Instead the conference is to, erm... yeah we'll find out next week.

X-post there..

Monarch has gone into administration .

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk

@cnnbrk
UK orders “biggest ever peacetime repatriation” after 110,000 travelers are stranded by Monarch Airlines bankruptcy cnn.it/2x7M54d

As an additional point, I fail to understand why "nationalism" (when it describes Scottish, Welsh - or indeed Catalonian - identities) is "bad", but "British" nationalism is "good"
That has massively struck me too. I can understand where people disagree with nationalism but I can't understand why some people feel the appropriate response is to fall in with a different type of nationalism. In Scotland's case, essentially bunging in with English nationalism because its not really British is it

Scotland, like Ireland and all nations colonised by the English have every understandable right to seek independence. Nationalism can be a useful servant and a bad master.

In fact most 'isms' are( good servants etc). The grey fudge of democracy looks so attractive now.

Think there's a lot more going on in Catalonia than 'nationalism', and the usual suspects are in play, sadly.

‏ @JamesWillby 9h

1. Thread on my experience in a previous life as a Cameron Conservative. This will be a little long, but i hope interesting.
2. Conservative Future at the time (2009) wasn't what it became later. It was a place where Liberals could find a home and campaign.

3. It was - with Ben Howlett as chair - modern & progressive with sensible policies on climate change, marriage for all etc.

1. The "Sound" crowd was present. These are the faux Libertarians - wannabe tax avoiders - who shout "sound" at stupid ideas.
2. However generally speaking, those i campaigned with were as i was: socially liberal but with a fierce sense of economic pragmatism.
3. My worst moment was being screamed at by Andrew Rosindell at a Con Way Forward - shakes head - event for being pro-EU. That was fun.
4. And i never went anywhere near the Young Britain Foundation. I was, after all, sane.
5. May 2010 was spent with a group of three others driving around Kent helping to unseat Labour MPs and turn Kent blue. We did well. But ...
6. I was not that impressed with the candidates. Especially the one for Rochester and Strood who missed his 1st vote as an MP by being drunk

10. It dawned on me quickly that MPs are, in the main, the worst people in a party. As in you have to be bolshy and obtuse to become one. 11. But they're as nothing compared to local associations. There's a reason why candidates are parachuted in. 12. If you want to see what happens when right-wing local associations choose candidates, look to UKIP. Well, ex-UKIP now Tories. 13. But we won. And i was actually very happy with the coalition. 2010-2015 was a good time to be liberal and centre-right. However ... 14. The Tories claim they brought about marriage for all, but its a lie. 15. There were the constant attempts to undermine Ed Davey who was doing an excellent job at the DECC. 16. And the humiliation of Nick Clegg over Lords Reform and the jeering from the backbenches was repugnant. But still, i stayed. 17. 2015 is where it started to go wrong. Without the Lib Dems, Cameron had to bend the knee to the hard-right. Cons Future changed too. 18. Europhobia was "cool". Madhat speakers were being invited to Conservative local assocs and university societies. Pragmatism was dying. 19. Liberal Conservatives could see what was becoming, but we stayed to try to prevent the party imploding. 20. I remember an event with Steve Baker. He left me in no doubt that being pro-EU and a Tory was - in his ideological mind - incompatible. 21. And then came the referendum. CCHQ was "neutral" (!) while a majority of the local assocs and uni socs were Leave. 22. But what drove me out wasn't the result, but the aftermath. And specifically three words. 23. Fearing for its survival, the party embraced UKIP as its own & lurched right-wards. Liberals were stunned. 24. And then at #CPC16, now PM @theresa_may said this. And i knew the Liberal heart had died within the party and it was time to go. 25. I don't think the party had any idea how badly "Citizen of Nowhere" would go down. But it was the straw that broke the camel's back. 26. What exists today is nothing like the socially liberal and fiscally sensible party i campaigned for in 2010. 27. Rudderless, captured by the hard-right, salivating over Hard Brexit & in thrall to the Mail & Express, the Tories are unfit to govern. 28. #GE17 was an opportunity for humility. Instead they seek to lecture Britain's liberals on why they were right with SoS call us remoaners 29. They are not a path to the open, tolerant and liberal Britain we want. Nor are they the path the sound public finances. 30. Maybe one day they will be. But for now, they need to go into the wilderness again. We'll be waiting for when they return sane. /Fin

@lukestegemann
Here is my second thread reflecting on events in Catalonia, the press and social media:
The international misreading of events in Catalonia has been generally woeful.
There is clearly no defence of PM Rajoy's ham-fisted tactics with the police and civil guards; there is a long history of this in Spain
Yet Catalan separatists knew for months this was coming - and so they played their hand.
They ignored warning after warning, and court ruling after court ruling, advising them not to go ahead
Yet those Catalan separatists behaved like petulant teenagers, every warning serving only to increase their persecution complex
They must have known the police response might be excessive and yet they went ahead despite every opportunity to stop
Voting is not illegal in Catalonia; however calling this referendum, without any procedural guarantees, WAS both illegal and a sham
As for the actual voting process and counting on the day, it has been a farce by any reasonable international standard.
Meanwhile, the old clichés - both romanticised and condescending - have been dusted off and given full airing
It's hard even to know where to begin with 'Catalonia good democrats', 'Spain bad fascists' - a completely clueless reading
In the press and on Twitter, the anglophone and francophone tradition of bad-mouthing Spain is alive and well
The Catalan separatists would be delighted with that too...
The personal and institutional damage will be long-lasting indeed. And for what?

Heseltine (on Sky News’ Sunday with Niall Paterson)

said the Tory conference in Manchester would be a “fully dressed but totally revealing political beauty contest”
with leadership rivals positioning themselves to replace Theresa May.

“That is the worst sort of background for a government that ought to be concentrating,
first of all, on its programme for government,
and secondly on the vision as to where it should go.”

On Boris:
“we all know what he’s up to”

He said Boris was appealing to “elderly” voters and

“those elements of their personal conviction that he thinks are most likely to trigger support for him”.

“I understand those arguments but they are phony, they are duplicitous,”

(paywall) Queen ‘misled’ by broken Theresa May

^^

< snippets from "Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem" being serialised in S Times>

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/queen-misled-by-broken-theresa-may-kf6n3zdbv

Buckingham Palace was left infuriated with Theresa May’s behaviour after her general election disaster plunged the prime minister into a personal “crisis of confidence”.

Senior courtiers were exasperated that May misled the Queen
by saying she had a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP),

only to take another 17 days to nail it down, and then went on to breach protocol in the way she announced her intention to form a government.
....
May’s problems led to tensions with Buckingham Palace,
where the Queen’s +private secretary, Sir Christopher Geidt,
was unable to get answers from No 10 about the status of the DUP deal
or about rumours that May was on the verge of resigning.
....
It reveals that the prime minister repeatedly broke down in tears after surrendering the Conservative majority
and went into a spiral after she faced widespread criticism for failing to meet victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.

She had to have her make-up redone before she visited the Queen because she had been crying.

Aides grew concerned that she might not be able to go on.
“She looked tired and I don’t think she was thinking straight,” one said.

By the Friday of the week after the election, a senior political appointee decided help was needed, saying:
“She was absolutely beaten, grey-skinned. I’ve seen people with shell shock and she looked worse than that.”

The aide said :
“I can get you former special forces commanders . . . people who have been in crunching encounters.

They will realise it is in the national interest to keep her on track and keep her going.”

The offer was not taken up.
....
According to a Tory who has discussed the events with a senior member of the royal household:
“There was a high degree of uncertainty about whether Theresa May would survive.”

May had been to see the Queen the day after the election,
an encounter the monarch appears not to have relished.

“In the private audiences between the Queen and Mrs May,
I don’t think the Queen finds Mrs May any easier company than anyone else,”
.....
After the audience, royal aides were annoyed by the content of May’s speech on the steps of Downing Street.
A Tory peer recalled:
“She said, ‘I’ve formed a government’, not ‘The Queen has asked me to form a government’.
The palace was alarmed by her formulation of words.”

A Tory adviser said May had inadvertently misled the Queen about the status of the DUP deal
because her chief whip, Gavin Williamson, only had a preliminary deal.

“The palace was irritated,” the adviser said.
“They felt that the deal with the DUP hadn’t been done.
Gavin thought he had assurances that he didn’t have.”

The royal source added:
“It is certainly true the palace was being given a greater sense of certainty about the deal than was accurate,
because the truth is that the DUP buggered Mrs May about longer than she thought.
< that what happens to a weak PM >

“They were getting more frustrated with it because they were running into Ascot and the state opening of parliament.

Because the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are so old, it’s quite difficult to have them sitting about.”

While the affair did not lead to a formal complaint from the palace,
the sources say that Geidt and others repeatedly made clear their frustration at the silence from Downing Street.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-queen-furious-theresa-may-democratic-unionist-party-dup-election-deal-buckingham-palace-a7976406.html
Queen 'furious at being misled by Theresa May over DUP deal'
The Prime Minister told the monarch she had secured the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), only for it to take another 17 days before a deal was finalised

Gosh. I'd never have guessed the Queen was pissed at May.

Brexit and the collapse of the £ probably was the coup de grace for Monarch. I will have to claim via my credit card company. Question we are all pondering now is whether we re-book with another airline straight away or hold off.

Anyone in their right minds would be pissed off by May. And the queen is not only not stupid but is also very experienced in the process and protocols of forming governments. I imagine that she guards the conventions extremely jealously and May has driven a bus through them.

In fact, the whole of May's time in office seems to demonstrate that anything we thought was a safeguard against excessive executive power can be ignored by the government with absolute impunity. It's very frightening.

(Relurking now)

David Lammy‏*@DavidLammy*

PM's former spin doctor: Help to Buy "does a good job of making housebuilders richer and assisting the middle classes to buy £500,000 flats"

It seems May's outright rejection of democracy is having multiple effects that might well threaten her authority. In essence though, this is a good thing. People do not like being TOLD from above what the will of the people is.

Jessica Elgot‏*@jessicaelgot*

I'm at the launch of the Campaign for Conservative Democracy - they are holding a mock election for party chair #CC17
David Campbell-Bannerman MEP is launching the group, calling it "a very gentle, very civilised grassroots rebellion."
Campaign for Conservative Democracy calling for power to be given back to local associations & to directly elected leader and party chair
Seems it's not just Labour influenced by @CLPD_Labour and @PeoplesMomentum. Tories here calling for more member autonomy and influence.
"We want to re-energise and reboot our party and make the association King again."

The whole buy to let market needs some sort of regulation. It's really distorted the lower end of the market with starter homes being bought up by BtL landlords. It seems madness to me that people who 40 years ago would have rented from the council have to rent those self-same properties from private landlords.

Tom Brake‏*@thomasbrake*

Local hospital unable to recruit EU nurses amidst legal uncertainty and weak pound; now paying £1000 a visa for Indian/Filipino nurses.

FREEdom of Movement.

That's also a £1000 we can't invest in training nurses from our own workforce.

Matthew Holehouse‏*@mattholehouse*
New realism from Gove. Farmers ask if they can de/re-regulate xyz. Everything constrained by EU market access, he says

Simon Cox‏*@SimonFRCox*
Fox plays down UK aspect of Bombardier because he knows it shows how post-Brexit UK-US trade would run. Thread. 1
amp.ft.com/content/7bd39472-a6dd-11e7-ab55-27219df83c97
Liam Fox accuses US of protectionism over Bombardier
Trade secretary says UK caught in crossfire of row with Canada

1. Politicians talk abt WTO rules. But states will avoid rules if that's to their advantage: so consequences for breach are crucial.
2. EU has world's best system of anti-protectionist enforcement: massive fines on EU states if they break rules v other EU states.
3. EU acts against all EU states - even most powerful. Fines are easily enforced, so states don't want them & comply instead.
4. Key achievement of EU: very little economic protectionism between EU states.
5. WTO enforcement depends on state-to-state retaliation. So big states fear WTO rules much less than smaller ones.
6. For WTO purposes, EU is a state - biggest in WTO. Threat of EU retaliation is most serious risk of protectionism by non-EU state.
7. If UK leaves EU's single market, UK will have strong interest in avoiding protectionism v EU. Just like every other WTI state.
8. But a post-Brexit UK won't pose a serious threat of retaliation against much larger "states" - like US and EU.

10. Why should US fear Bombardier retaliation: UK isn't big enough & EU won't help UK so long as UK Gov aims to take UK out of Single Market 11. So protectionism against UK by non-EU states may be a key "canary down the mine" of a post-Brexit world. 12. The lone wolf who believes the pack had been holding him back will quickly find how hard it is to survive - especially against a bear.

Peregina, you could book with Ryanair. I suspect their pilot shortage may take a turn for the better...

Peregina, you could book with Ryanair.

. Probably go with Norwegian - who have recruited a lot of Ryanair pilots. Probably sent the car park fees down the swanee - those paid via debit card. Must see what the travel insurance says - I suspect it's not covered.

Queen 'furious at being misled by Theresa May over DUP deal'
There's a monarch joke in here. Is this strategic positioning for a JC republican lite premiership?
Me too Peregrina on monarch tickets, booked as part of holiday deal, will wait to see what holiday co, says. To Spain! Choice between civil unrest and flight cancellations. It's like living in a Graham Greene novel.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/02/truly-sorry-monarch-chief-blames-terror-attacks-plunge-airline/
'Truly sorry' Monarch chief blames terror attacks for plunge in airline revenues

rtb my first comment to dh this morning was along the lines of I bet Ryanair will have found a solution to their pilot shortage. Then I saw Grayling saying that he's spoken to other airlines about taking in staff, especially pilots and I felt dirty for clearly thinking like a Tory

'Truly sorry' Monarch chief blames terror attacks for plunge in airline revenues

When I used to work on cars, and a brake cylinder started leaking, my DF would always insist that we changed them in pairs. The reasoning being that replacing the weak (leaking one) with a strong new one would place strain on the next weakest part which was the other side cylinder.

On the few occasions customers insisted they knew best, and that we only needed to change one, my DF would invariably be proved right, as as a few days or weeks later the brake fluid would drop and the tell-tale signs of a leak appeared on the unchanged side.

I wonder if the pressures exerted by the fall in the pound are comparable. As one weak link is moved, the next weakest link has to cope with increased pressure

to Perigrina. Hope you sort something out.

Norwegian are fabulous. We flew with them recently. There was a runway closed at the airport we were flying to. We were delayed, and got on the flight only to be told that we might not be leaving for another 2 hours due to the airtraffic on our route being so heavy. They said that they were looking for approval on alternative flight path to avoid the congested area.

Ten minutes later they came back, said it was approved and they needed to fill the plane with extra fuel to do that, but we would take off as soon as that was done.

I was so impressed that they were willing to try and resolve the problem and take the hit on the fuel (rather than the compensation we probably were going to run into, as we were getting close to the 4 hr mark). I'm not convinced every airline would take that approach. I do think it they handled a bad situation and turned it into a real positive in circumstances beyond their control.

Its not the first time I've flown with them, and I honestly can't think of a bad thing to say about them. We'd happily pay slightly extra for them tbh.

Anyway back on topic.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/01/nhs-accused-culling-sick-free-transport-dialysis-stopped/
NHS accused of 'culling the sick' as free transport to dialysis stopped

The NHS Grenfell in the making.