Westminstenders: Sucking up to the 'enemy'

[RedToothBrush]

Phil Hammond called the EU the enemy. Then retracted it. A classic political move, to pitch to one group and then say you didn't mean it after all.

This is the UK's negotiation strategy. Because the negotiation isn't really with the EU. Its the ongoing debate over the what leaving the EU actually means since it wasn't officially defined prior to the referendum and has been left to politicians to say its one thing to persuade people to support them and then decided no that's not really what they meant after all.

The whole thing makes it impossible for the EU to respond to us, because we don't appear to know what we want.

The EU have been explicit in their position. So things they can not do because of the limitations of trade rules and EU law. Its possible work arounds could be possible for some things - but certainly not all which too many Brexiteers fail to acknowledge.

And then there is the a50 deadline which is like a snake coiled around May's neck slowly strangling her. A self imposed screwing of our negotiating position. One that kills off our Brexit options and ups the stakes into a brinkmanship battle - not with the EU but between the hardlines and the sane. Its not even about remaining, though that option might well end up being the only option left on the table through our own folly, rather than out of EU malice.

The longer we take to work out what we want the higher the stake become and the more we destroy the foundations of our economy in the meantime, even if we do stay in.

We have only just noticed that we've lost money worth 25% of our GDP and we have no net assets anymore, when in early 2016 we had significant assets. Project Fear they said was wrong. Well was it?

We are flat broke as a nation.

Then there is the Great Repel Bill. The Bill was supposed to be in the Commons this week. It was delayed a week due to the sheer number of amendments. There are nearly a dozen with enough Tory rebels to make them stick. Including one for parliament to have a meaningful vote on what option we take - including no deal. If parliament rejected this, we would be left in a situation where we sure as hell better hope a50 is reversible or we could end up unlawfully leave the EU by accident!

And the Lords could be fun for the Repel Bill. The Labour whip has vowed to examine every amendment properly even if the commons don't. And they are free and within their rights to do so.

Still May could exit stage left. Or left with egg all over her face as she has to suck up to the 'enemy' for being such a tool for the last 18months, because she hasn't made progress on the negotiations that really matter. The Tory party ones.

Whichever way you cut it, you can be sure on only one thing: it will go to the wire for both. And possibly beyond with an eleventh hour extension to prevent chaos.

There are hints that the public mood might be changing. Not fast enough. Yet. Interest rates? A break in the triple lock? Phil's budget sure will be interesting. Especially as Brexiteers want money to prepare and protect us from a no deal scenario which they also tell us will be just fine and won't be a problem. Bye Bye NHS, don't get flu this winter. As a note once infamously said: 'There's no many left'.

We are Greece. Only worse. And out of pressure and deadlines we alone created. We just haven't realised it. Yet.

And if this doesn't make you cringe and brace yourself in horror:

Danny Kemp‏ @dannyctkemp
May wants to take the floor at EU summit dinner on Thursday to explain Brexit policy to fellow leaders, senior official says

Just remember her party speech and think: What could possibly go wrong...

Not sure if this has been posted yet.

Steve Peers‏Verified account
@StevePeers

1 Let's talk about the dishonest and hypocritical campaign for "no deal" Brexit - starting with this grotesque lie.

2 The UK doesn't trade with the non-EU world on WTO terms. First of all, the EU has a number of free trade agreements. Map from WTO site.

3 Here's those deals in list form. Info from the WTO site here: rtais.wto.org/UI/PublicMaintainRTAHome.aspx …

4 Where the EU doesn't have an FTA it has other trade deals in force, as @OliverNorgrove discussed here (Steve Peers added,
Oliver NorgroveVerified account @OliverNorgrove
Right gang. We need to have a little chat about John Redwood, because he's been telling pernicious and inexcusable lies again. - remember, Norgrove is a Leaver ).

5 One example: some EU trade deals protect the trade name of a major Scottish export, such as this deal with Canada before the new FTA.

6 Link to that EU/Canada treaty on wine and spirits here: eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2004.035.01.0003.01.ENG …

7 Then there's the sheer hypocrisy of the "WTO only" argument. Remember "The EU won't let us do trade deals with the rest of the world"?

8 This argument presupposes that FTAs are a great thing. So how can its advocates also claim we need no FTA with our largest trade partner?

9 Remember "the EU is a protectionist racket?". An exaggerated claim. But the people who make it also say we shouldn't have an FTA with EU?

10 Why shouldn't we aim to reduce those trade barriers as far as possible by signing an FTA with - I repeat - our biggest trading partner?

11 Is there a democratic mandate for "no deal"? Hell no. Here's what Vote Leave promised: staying part of a European free trade zone.

12 Link to the Vote Leave site here:

13 Remember "people knew they were voting to leave the single market". Maybe. But they were sure as hell told they'd have free trade with EU

14 Imagine you're a factory worker in the North of England or the Midlands, attracted by Leave arguments but worried about your job.

15 The Leave side reassures you the EU signs lots of FTAs. True, although FTAs aren't the same as single market participation.

16 But now your vote is interpreted as a vote for no FTA at all. If WTO terms are so great, why'd they promise an FTA to referendum voters?

17 Don't blame Leave voters, blame Leave liars. The sight of Rees-Mogg, IDS etc treating working class voters with contempt makes me seethe.

18 I'm the son of a factory worker. Most of my family have been laid off at some point. Rees-Mogg will never know or care what that's like.

19 What about "economic forecasts get it wrong" and "the forecasters are biased"? Let's turn those arguments around, shall we?

20 Mervyn King, hard Brexit pinup, admits screwing up over the financial crisis, causing God knows how much damage:

21 Patrick Minford, WTO only dude, backed the poll tax and wrongly forecast the minimum wage would cost many jobs:

22 What's that phrase again? It's on the tip of my tongue.

Oh yes.

"Wrong then - and wrong now"

23 What about forecaster bias? Here's the Legatum Institute, the WTO only fans with their tentacles throughout govt: www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=86556 …

24 Their specialty - "disaster capitalism", including health care. What could possibly attract them to damaging the UK economy?

25 I don't like Brexit, but I engage constructively for the sake of damage control. But "no deal" nonsense is another kettle of fish.

26 If anyone tells me to "get behind no deal Brexit", my answer is, inspired by May's conference speech:

uck off and die

*ends

Thanks, Red. I love the way the Brexitbots start flapping when things are not going their way...

Place marking

Brexitbots start flapping

You’ve given me a really unfortunate mental picture in the context of the chipolata flasher conversation

Haha, I've now got that image too elements. It will make reading the post more pleasurable.

Just like how I read Redwood's with a voiceover in my head saying 'conservative MP for mordor'

Thank you red :-)

Thank you red

Thank- you so much again Red.

I like to declare that I share Icantreach’s vested interests too. *
*
Better than the divested disinterest we are lemming ing towards.

Remember there’s a new acronym for hard Brexit gentleman visitors, coined by Woman and proudly inspired by me, its ...by VOHAP.

Drug firms making plans in the event of a hard Brexit

https://edition.independent.co.uk/editions/uk.co.independent.issue.171017/data/8003871/index.html

Drugmakers and medical devices companies are drawing up plans to protect supply chains
in case Britain crashes out of the European Union without a trade deal, and some small service businesses are already relocating to stay inside the bloc.
...
In the absence of a deal, Britain’s trade with the EU would revert to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, under which industrialised countries generally apply zero tariffs for medicines.
However, the WTO’s drugs list has not been updated since 2010, so newer medicines could still be hit.
< then there are customs inspections and layers of certification ... >

And the big Brexit winner is ... Frankfurt^
but Paris & Dublin winning business too

No prizes for guessing the big loser: UK^ of course

Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Standard Chartered and Nomura Holdings have picked Frankfurt for their EU HQ to ensure continued access to the single market.
Goldman Sachs and UBS are still deciding between Frankfurt & elsewhere in the E27

HSBC have chosen Paris
Barclays chose Dublin.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-brexit-bankers/

Frankfurt has emerged as the biggest winner in the fight for thousands of London-based jobs that will have to be relocated to new hubs inside the European Union after Brexit.
...
London could lose 10,000 banking jobs and 20,000 roles in financial services
as clients move 1.8 trillion euros ($2.1 trillion) of assets out of the U.K. on Brexit
according to think-tank Bruegel.

< I hope the OBR are including this fleeing of assets to their forecast for The Day After >

The implications for the U.K. are substantial:
finance and related professional services bring in some £190 billion ($248 billion) a year, representing 12 percent of the British economy.

We've been worried about the City losing jobs, with subsequent loss of service jobs

Maybe we should worry more out the haemorrhaging of wealth out of the country

No. I've always worried more about the wealth - and the money that goes into the economy - more than the jobs. Once the HQs move elsewhere, the revenues raised move elsewhere. That money is what helps keep the streetlights on, the water clean, and schools heated.

At the moment, some commentators are saying that Frankfurt lacks the infrastructure which the international bankers require e.g. International schools, opportunities to live a cosmopolitan lifestyle,which will prevent people from wanting to relocate. IMO with significant numbers being asked to relocate, that infrastructure would be built, possibly fairly rapidly.

The trouble is, those jobs, and that wealth, is going, and it's not coming back - even if we finally come to our senses and cancel Brexit. That's schools that will never be built, nurses and doctors that will never be trained.

We may be able to salvage some of it, enough to save the NHS if we're lucky, by pulling out of Brexit, but we've already done incalculable damage to this country that we love. That is why I still feel like I'm grieving.

Added to the vested interests listed above, obviously...

We're so reliant on the tax revenue of the City, I really do wonder what is going to happen if it relocates. I have to say, I never thought I'd see a government that ushered the City elsewhere. But here we seem to be. The 'special passporting deal' hasn't materialised and it's hard to imagine what the UK will be like if it loses that amount of revenue.

I would hope that if we did pull out of Brexit, which seems unlikely, that at least we would start to train more of our own health care staff. Also re-introduce bursaries for nursing and midwifery. A genuine commitment to the NHS is possibly the only thing which could really turn the Tory fortunes round.

Personally I hope that the present incarnation of Tories destroy themselves for a generation - which would suit me, because I'm in my sixties and would never have to suffer them again.

.

Doing a John Redwood should be entered into the urban dictionary as the description for anyone who spouts such spectactular bollocks as to render itself an unintended parody. Applies not just to words but also actions. See the welsh national anthem

Harry Cole @ mrharrycole
Liam Fox: "Leaving without a deal will not be the Armageddon some people predict."

David Lammy @ davidlammy
"Not Armageddon" is a pretty long way away from the promised deal (easiest in human history), sunlit uplands and global trade deals, Liam

George Tait @ bertiebobo
I think Liam's saying that there will only be three apocalyptic horses rather than the expected four.

Brilliant responses there.

Reality Check: We are now being asked to consider a Brexit which is varying magnitudes of Apocalypse. We've come a long way, baby.

Funny how the public are being eased gently towards this. What a self-willed catastrophe. You were absolutely spot on in saying that we are now Greece - but so much worse.

There will be no deal because the EU is too vindictive, too incompetent and too disorganised to sort one out, despite it benefitting them more than it does us
[WF]

Of course people have a 'vested interest' in staying in the EU. The prosperity of the UK depends on it.

As for the sentence quoted, every word of it refers to the Conservative and Unionist Party, and no other entity.

If you don't believe me, please note the spectacle of Theresa May rushing around like a scalded earwig putting out fires her own incompetent administration and her predecessor's started, for example the complete cockup that is the rollout of Universal Credit.

I take it you are one of those who expects the rest of the EU to put its economic and agricultural planning on hold while the Tories take a few years to sort out their shit, decide who they are, decide what exactly they mean by Brexit, only potentially to have the entire edifice (if one ever materialises) come crashing down because a small group of creationists in a far off corner of the backwoods on whose support the government depends decides it doesn't like Clause 224 xviii(b) §3a-44.

but we'll be fine trading with EU member states on a WTO basis like we currently trade with most of the rest of the world. We still have our own seat on the WTO, of course, although we can't use it at the moment because the EU won't let us.

It would be funny if it wasn't so tragically wrong.

I don't get Norgrove and the Norths.
But I also don't get why in real life people aren't more bothered.

Has anyone noticed that the Brexit bots recently have all been Dads? There are 2 on the Brexiters thread, one on the food thread who has a posting style uncannily like another Dad. Now there's the paranoid posh version on this thread.
The Menz putting us poor deluded ladies in our place?

Different topic, but more grim news:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-17/spy-chief-warns-u-k-facing-dramatic-surge-in-terrorist-threats

The U.K. is experiencing a rapidly-evolving terrorist threat operating at a pace and scale never experienced before,
warned the head of the country’s domestic intelligence agency in a rare public speech.

Andrew Parker, director-general of MI5, said that seven plots by Islamic extremists have been foiled since March
and police have arrested record numbers on terrorist offenses in response to a threat that is “coming at us more quickly, and it can be harder to detect.”

< so maybe a good idea to reverse police cuts, so we don't have too few officers to handle it all and with leave cancelled >