Westminstenders: Stuck in the twilightzone

[RedToothBrush]

Just want to remind everyone if what really matters and what the priority if Theresa May is.

May isn't interested in a new referendum. There is barely time to hold one, and anyone remotely interested in one, isn't named Theresa May. Forget it. Its not happening.

Nor are Brexit talks the most important thing. Whilst Jeremy Corbyn seems finally to be playing with some sort if EEA type solution he's not the one named Theresa May. If she doesn't want one, then it won't happen.

May does seem to favour something along these lines but she has to sell it to her party. If she ends up relying on the support of Labour to push it through against what her party want, then that doesn't end well for her or her party. So Corbyn seeming to squeeze her here isn't necessarily a good thing. It could push her to no deal.

Why?

Cos petty party politics.

THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING, and don't forget this, is the EU withdrawal Bill. As it stands, May has to concentrate her efforts on this. If it doesn't pass by the art 50 deadline then we have legal chaos. May isn't big on the courts, but I'm not sure she would want that situation either. It would be even more unthinkable than queues at Dover coupled with food shortages.

If it doesn't pass, and the Lords will do all they can to delay and obstruct as long as they can, May's only option is to beg for an art 50 extension. Which the EU might not be inclined to give. Which might leave us in a situation where our only option is to revoke a50.

The only predictable thing, is this will be last minute brinkmanship.

All the talk of a second ref is a distraction. Talk of Labour's position at this point, is all about positioning for the next election and not about Brexit at all.

So try to keep your eyes on what really matters and what battles are May's big ones and which are merely side shows.

I wonder who Side Show Bob will turn out to be.

[Cailleach1]

The UKIP rhetoric of the EU as a malevolent org whose aim is to trample over and remove any sovereignty from the Irish people won't get too far in Ireland.

The anti-EU membership conference "is being organised by Mr Farage’s Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group in the European parliament."

Been there, done that and certainly wouldn't trust the messenger. EU membership has been transformative for Ireland. Why even bother pushing this slant and who would benefit? Cui bono? Who is paying for it? They aren't misappropriating EU funds again for campaigns in nation states, are they?

[Tanith]

While I have a lot of sympathy for ordinary leave voters who have changed their minds, or who think that the government is implementing their vote badly, you'd have to be a saint not to gloat about this.

I know the farm and, by reputation, its owner and I have no sympathy whatsoever.

[Holliewantstobehot]

I'd also like to see a recognition of the amount of money carers save the government at personal financial cost to themselves. I am biased on this point as I am a carer for my DS who has ASD and such bad anxiety he can't leave the house. I get carers allowance but actually my biggest worry is what will happen to me when hopefully DS becomes independent. I will be a single person starting all over again in the job market in my late forties. I would love to see bursaries for carers to help them to retrain if they need to for example.

Another issue that is also generally a women's issue. Not an issue for my ex who is still progressing in his career. But then DS won't see him anyway for various legitimate reasons.

[lonelyplanetmum]

Completely randomly...the statement from Tusk that the other member states still open hearted to us set me thinking.

This is of course purely hypothetical.What would Labour do if there was a u turn?

Say May managed to miraculously unify her party. Impossible I know. Then instead of a fudge an immense u turn is honestly announced. Just imagine May says something like:
" The referendum was two years ago. Things have changed.Whilst we have listened, the time may come to relinquish our membership of the EU but that time is not now. We will work for say 10 years with the other member states and address some of the concerns we all have. We will reassess matters in 2028."

In the very, very unlikely event of that happening what would Labour do?

[lonelyplanetmum]

Again completely randomly, apparently there will be a new direct link for passengers and freight between Spain and Ireland to circumvent the UK. Must be good news for Ireland though?

www.irishnews.com/lifestyle/holidays/2018/01/16/news/ferry-link-between-ireland-and-spain-starts-at-end-of-april-1233662/

[HashiAsLarry]

lonely best case scenario is they'd welcome it but berate the Tories for that entire 10 years for the waste of time and effort, plus the damage they caused. Worst case, they'd become the party of brexit which would possibly still be better than ukip as the party of brexit. Overton window may actually fall out of its frame.

[HashiAsLarry]

Saw a Noam Chomsky quote the other day. Well re saw it.

"That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital."

I'm seeing this happen here with schools, well at least the first three. Anyone else seeing this?

[lonelyplanetmum]

Overton's window

Interesting. I had to google it. According to Overton's description, his window includes a range of policies considered politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too extreme to gain or keep public office.

This thread is so educational!

[MsHooliesCardigan]

Oh God, not Brexit stamps. The thought of Farage or Gove’s face on a stamp makes me feel genuinely nauseous.
I read the link about the Brexit voting fruit farmer who is bemoaning that his business will go down the pan without EU workers and noted that he said that he has had one British applicant in the last few years who left after one day which rather contradicts a lot of Brexiters’ assertions that all these East Europeans are taking jobs from British workers.
I thought Junker and Tusk showed a lot of dignity today in reaching out and trying to do what’s best for the greatest number of people which shows such a contrast with Davis and al who are acting like petulant toddlers stamping their feet, who are clearly putting their party and their career ahead of everything else.
I am genuinely embarrassed to be British right now.

[BiglyBadgers]

I thought Junker and Tusk showed a lot of dignity today in reaching out and trying to do what’s best for the greatest number of people which shows such a contrast with Davis and al who are acting like petulant toddlers stamping their feet, who are clearly putting their party and their career ahead of everything else.

I may have made a bit of an undignified snort of laughter when I heard him quote David Davis on democracy. That is some serious pro level trolling.

[MsHooliesCardigan]

Agreed Bigly

[DGRossetti]

all the talk of Dunkirk spirit and our glorious empire

The thing is Dunkirk was an absolute military disaster, precipitated by the arrogance of the British Army who refused to believe (again !) that Johnny foreigner - and bosch foreigner at that - could in any way come close to beating the wonder British Tommy. Even an ill equipped and unprepared British Tommy.

Yes, Dunkirk was a miracle - and yes it really did engage the man on the Clapham omnibus. But it's significant that the narrative never questions why it was necessary. After all, it was a retreat ffs !

[Hasenstein]

Interesting day today. My DW had to go for her spoken English test as part of the citizenship application. Fortunately, she passed with flying colours. Could have something to do with the fact she's been here 40 years.

Half an hour of pleasant nattering with an examiner - a snip at just £150. Interestingly, the examinations coordinator is Dutch (!), but hasn't done the exam yet, as he can't afford the fee. Do UKIP know that a Dutch person is handling English tests?

More annoyingly, she had to hand over her mobile and her watch (huh?) in case she deceived the examiner by using them as an aid, despite being sat face to face over a small table. Her shiny new certificate will be sent by post. They wanted her to pay an extra £12.50 to guarantee delivery, but she said 1st class mail should be OK. I do hope so, as a replacement costs another £25. The costs just keep mounting up.

Next step, Life in the UK test. Better start swotting up on mediaeval history, obscure population matters (percentage of population who are Sikhs?) and other vital information for living in the UK.

[DGRossetti]

Next step, Life in the UK test.

Paul Sinhas citizenship test might help

[HermioneAndMsJones]

Hashi yes I agree re letting things go so bad that people feel they have to go private. (Or the whole system is becoming private).

We are moving our dcs to a private school because of that.
And my dad has gone private for the last health issues he has had. Well that was until routine surgery went not quiTe right and he was back in an NHS hospital bed.

And this is the issue here for me.
We do have private health care in the U.K. But actually, it is very dependant on the NHS.
We do have private schools, but pupils still end back in the state system (at Uni, for exams etc...)

[DGRossetti]

www.europeanmovement.co.uk/veterans_for_europe_affiliation

The European Movement UK is pleased to announce our affiliation with Veterans for Europe. Veterans for Europe is an active group of pro-European, pro-Remain veterans, serving personnel and dependents from all three services, whose aim is to support the United Kingdom in remaining within the European Union.

[RhuBarbarella]

Caroline Lucas is having a great day. I saw a clip of her talking on animal welfare in the HoC, worth watching on twitter's Green Party feed.
And she wrote a plan to stop Brexit, published today on www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2018/01/16/the-three-stage-plan-to-stop-brexit
An excerpt:

"Stage one should be a gear shift away from an elite-led campaign. At the Stronger In board meeting on 7th June 2016 I aimed my fire at the overuse of David Cameron in the campaign. For a man who had imposed crippling austerity on a country to then warn people of the personal financial risks of voting the wrong way was arrogant at best and reckless at worse.

Now think about someone like Blair, whose deceit is etched into our collective memory. Having him front a remain campaign just won't fly.
So for the next few months, at least, let's have a moratorium on male ex-politicians taking to the airwaves as leaders on this issue.
[...]
Stage two must be a commitment to seriously tackling the underlying issues which fuelled Brexit. We should not obsess over the technicalities of a ratification referendum, for example, at the expense of reflecting on the deep reasons for the result in 2016. This cannot be done by the liberal old guard either, because it means confronting the forces that have systematically marginalised people in the processes of neoliberal globalisation.

A successful campaign must show that international solidarity, not isolation, is the best way to curtail the power of the nefarious global elite. It will be the work of many years to turn round these impacts, and to challenge the years of scapegoating of immigrants, but we have to start now by finding genuine joint solutions about people’s very real worries about jobs, pay, schools and housing. Our campaign must also show that EU reform isn't just possible, but a top priority.

Stage three must mean building on the cross-party work against Brexit that's already taking place - and that means engaging the Labour leadership. We should be honest about the fact that Jeremy Corbyn could change everything. In 2016 Another Europe is Possible asked Corbyn to join a left-wing, anti-austerity, pro-EU platform alongside myself and colleagues from all of the progressive parties. He refused. But if he's serious about doing all he can to protect public services, about being in it for the many not the few, and about a better future for our young people, he should consider doing so now. Such a cross-party campaign should clearly come out in favour of a ratification referendum, a position which research by Queen Mary University shows 78% of Labour members support."

[Tanith]

Labour have had a policy of providing free childcare since their 2017 manifesto and do talk about it as a serious issue.

They addressed the childcare issue long before that.
Labour introduced free nursery education for 4 year olds, extended to 3 year olds, when they were in power. They introduced Childrens Centres and Surestart. They introduced Every Child Matters.
They intended to increase their 5 free sessions to 10 free sessions per week before the economic crash. There’s every indication that they would have done so had they been re-elected.

They offered free childcare, and costed it, in the 2015 election. The Conservatives decided to “trump” their offer with a promise of 30 free hours. Unfortunately, it’s become clear they didn’t cost it: hence the appalling mess caused by the 30 hours offer that most certainly isn’t free for many and is seeing nurseries and childminders going out of business at a shocking rate.

[OnTheDarkSideOfTheSpoon]

I like the Chomsky quotation hashi. I wonder if the Tories think themselves so brilliant as to work out how to privatise human rights

Labour Whips‏Verified account
@labourwhips
Government vote down @uklabour amendment 4 by 299 to 317 majority 18

David Lammy
‏@DavidLammy
I was one of 299 MPs who voted for Amendment 4 to retain EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in UK law. Shame on the Govnt for scrapping hard-won human rights that were not theirs to give away - they belonged to me, you, my constituents & every citizen (both Remainers and Leavers!)

And also [on amendment 57]

Esther Webber‏
@estwebber
MPs vote 319 to 296 against Labour MP Kerry McCarthy's amendment aiming to preserve more comprehensively rights derived from EU law

[RhuBarbarella]

www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/16/britons-in-netherlands-take-fight-for-their-eu-rights-to-dutch-court
Jo Maugham has a new case:
A group of UK nationals living in the Netherlands are going to court to challenge the right of the British government and the European commission to negotiate away their rights as EU citizens in the Brexit talks. [...]
The case will be heard in Amsterdam on Wednesday, where a referral to the European court of justice will be sought, in what could be a major test of the treatment of UK nationals by the EU and UK in the Brexit talks, with potentially huge ramifications. [...]
The group argue in their action against the Dutch government that after Brexit on 29 March 2019, anyone who had UK citizenship before that date should legally retain EU rights including freedom of movement and the right of residence.
They say the EU’s treaties are silent on what happens to citizens of a member state that leaves the union. But they claim the Lisbon treaty gives “real weight” to the rights of EU nationals, and that these are not coupled to the political fate of their home country.
The group’s lawyer, Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, said he expected the court to take six weeks at most to decide whether to refer the case to the ECJ. “We are in a rush,” he said. “I’m convinced that the ECJ should assess these questions. Theresa May famously said ‘Brexit means Brexit’ but no one knows what that means.”

[lonelyplanetmum]

Stage three -We should be honest about the fact that Jeremy Corbyn could change everything.
In 2016 Another Europe is Possible asked Corbyn to join a left-wing, anti-austerity, pro-EU platform alongside myself and colleagues from all of the progressive parties. He refused.
But if he's serious about doing all he can to protect public services, about being in it for the many not the few, and about a better future for our young people, he should consider doing so now. Such a cross-party campaign should clearly come out in favour of a ratification referendum, a position which research by Queen Mary University shows 78% of Labour members support.

^
This.

[woman11017]

120 000 dead due to" austerity" (a sixth of those killed in Stalin's Terror)
and we just lost our human rights folks.

As women, BAME and people with disabilities; that would be our rights.

By the way, fire fighters are on stand by to deliver school dinners due to collapse of Carillion

[HermioneAndMsJones]

Yay 😭😭😭😩😩
If it wasn’t clear enough already, there are few MPs that actually care about the ‘people’ at its welfare.
So is gone the equality of pay between men and women, human rights etc... from the Human Right Act.
And what is it replaced with ??? Who knows? :(

[HashiAsLarry]

Should say that the we in that post referred to a group of parents and no just me and dh. We don't just randomly go around poking in school business