Westministenders: KAAAAABBBOOOOOOOOMMMMM

[RedToothBrush]

'Quick' Recap.

Once upon a time, despite warnings to the contrary after previously attempting to recreate a speech from the 1930s, Theresa May triggered a50.

A series of events, which included a disastrous unnecessary General Election and losing seats, ensured that we have Brexit by Timetable in which every piece of goodwill was burnt up a long time ago, and the EU decided to go "see ya then".

Only this General Election, made this politically impossible as well as practically impossible, given how this would destroy our economy.

So May did the only thing she could and agreed to lock us in with sufficient progress deal, which is legally binding, if no deal is agreed. Thus giving us in essence a choice between staying in the Single Market and Customs Union due to NI or breaking an international agreement which would destroy all our international credibility and trust.

Except none of the Brexiteers really grasped what was happening. Until this week.

In the meantime we still have had spectacles of Nadine Dorries asking on the infamous WhatsApp Group why we can't stay in the CU. Any Davis saying that he has now apparently 'changed his mind' on the matter. Not that Labour are any better, with Corbyn saying we can't stay in the Single Market and leave the EU. Except of course, Norway is in the Single Market...

Fast forward through a sex scandal that's swept through Westminster, installing self appointing the vampiric Gavin Williamson as Defence Secretary, we eventually ended up with a reshuffle which was possibly as pointless and as successful as the General Election. And Gavin Williamson is caught up in a sex scandal.

May has managed to drag the Great Repel Bill through the Commons, without breaking the party, but with much back room dealing and compromise with Remainers. Hailed as something of a victory by Brexiteers, this rather is a fools paradise. At what price to their ideological purity did this come? Is there much Brexit left? And there is much more to come in the Lords, with the LDs committed to working with Labour on securing at least 10 amendments. The two parties have a majority in the Lords if they work together.

Away from parliament we have had the glorious demise of Toby Young, who is forever to be remembered for eugenics.

As it has become apparent that we are increasingly looking like we are on track for BINO, the EU have told us, that we should have sucked up a compromise proposal earlier and now the Norway Option is off the table as we fucked that up by taking too long to disagree amongst ourselves and being arses to EU citz. I paraphrase slightly here, but that's about he long and short of it. Instead we get the pleasure of 21 months of the EU interfering in our law without representation. And we are already locked into this. Now Leavers can moan about this, and shock horror, actually be correct about it too! Transition will be up to 31st Dec 2020 at the latest. Which realistically is still too soon, not that any lying arsed Brexiteer is willing to admit to this. Yet.

The only way to get out of this proposal for better terms? Either beg the EU for something there is no way they will give us or revoke / extend a50.

The fall out from May's reshuffle is still going on in slow motion. Rees-Mogg has got a bigger platform to spout shit he knows nothing about, admit that he has never changed a nappy nor wiped his own arse, thinks women should give birth to football teams, and how he has never visited IKEA and has no plans to do so. Johnson has tried to build bridges. And effed that one up again. Gove has made us all be obsessed by plastic straws and turn into environmental maniacs because no other minister is good at press releases and media stunts. Arch Remainac Liddington, got Deputy PM and took over Brexshit even more from DExEU. Hunt is in no way after becoming PM and Greening is really pissed and when straight back to lead from the Naughty Step.

To cut the long story short: they all hate May and think she's shit

There are thought to be nearly 48 letters to trigger a leadership election in Graham Brady's hands. But not quite. And its not about the letters its about needing 159 MPs to no confidence her... but that is starting to sound more and more plausible in the face of Brexshit hitting the fan.

We now have a leaked impact assessment that we really were not supposed to see which is slightly less worse than Project Fear. But not by much. Its supposed to be by DExEU. Its been suggested that its actually by alt-DExEU aka the Cabinet Department (Robbins and Liddington).

Anyway, nothing is decided. May might zombie on forever. She won't, she's in a crowded field of Tories with stakes. But that sub-committee meeting on Wed 7th Feb is crunch time for something or someone.

Tick tock, tick tock, went the Brexit Clock.

Oh yeah and there's going to be a trade war between the US and EU. And there's some stuff about a ex-Belize diplomat. And Trump's coming to visit us.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/11/restaurants-brexit-boom-to-bust-uk-hospitality-industry
I posted something similar a while ago but IME, in London it’s a positive rarity to get served by a U.K. born person in any kind of food outlet/coffee shop or hotel.
If they all returned home, the hospitality sector would literally collapse overnight.

One for @LukeCagesWife ...

metro.co.uk/2018/01/21/man-complains-bbc-saying-not-brexit-happens-7247915/

I've noticed the same MsHoolies - it even extends out to north Oxfordshire, e.g. the lady serving us for a pub lunch this week was from Barcelona; our local cafe is staffed mostly by E Europeans.

This latest 'red line' from TM on FoM reminds me of the trigger-art50-debacle. TM dug her heels in against all advice and we know how that ended in the High court. All unnecessary distraction, and all apparently down to TM's personal judgements.

Yes, agree.

Also reminiscent of weirdly picked battles like fox-hunting and grammar schools.

It won't end prettily.

I posted something similar a while ago but IME, in London it’s a positive rarity to get served by a U.K. born person in any kind of food outlet/coffee shop or hotel. If they all returned home, the hospitality sector would literally collapse overnight.

With the M&S news, there will be some places in the UK where the "high street" is only the hospitality industry.

There will be those of you, for whom the phrase "shoe event horizon" is more than 3 random words . I think the late, great DA might as well have oulined the "Costa Event Horizon" (thinks of Kingfisher in Redditch which is losing M&S, lost Woolies, BHS, Alders, T.J. Hughes, but has 2 Costas 50 yards from each other .....)

Here's a possible Brexiteer trope .... I would lay money that the vast majority of Brexiteers also believe the "High Street" will make a comeback. I wonder how many Remainers would believe that ?

Paywall: www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/02/02/liam-fox-rules-uk-staying-form-customs-union-eu-brexit/

Now this could trigger an interesting dilemma. What if parliament backs this - would Corbyn budge? Staying in the CU would solve many a headache.

Germany exports 5 times as much to China as the UK does
and as even Brexiters must have noticed: Germany is in the EU

I expect May will deliver a totally shit Brexit,

but because this will probably mean the UK economy just standing still, or contracting slightly, while comparable European countries race ahead,

it will be sold as a successful Brexit by a mostly nationalist rightwing media
and lapped up by that large section of the public that have abandoned thought and common sense for nationalism.

There will be further austerity to avoid worsening the deficit too much, so the poorest in society will pay for it all

Great thread title, thanks as usual RTB

another little reminder from your Irish friends on the different ramifications of Brexit...

www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/supreme-court/supreme-court-warns-brexit-may-have-impact-on-extraditions-to-uk-1.3376603

^Mr O’Connor is wanted to serve a four-and-a-half year prison sentence for defrauding the British Revenue. He was sentenced in January 2007 following a six week trial at Blackfriars Crown Court, London, and also faces further charges of absconding and breaching his bail in England......

....What is clear is that, if Mr O’Connor is surrendered, it is “highly probable” he will remain imprisoned in the UK after its withdrawal from the EU in March 2019, the judge said.

...His essential argument was Ireland is being asked to surrender an EU citizen to the UK when the legal framework governing that citizen is at least at significant risk of not being subject to EU law and rather dependent on UK law^

DD can add extradition treaties to his "to do" list

I totally agree BigChocFrenzy

Extradition

I'll be honest, that's something that wasn't even covered in brief up until now, but it's a very good point.

If the UK seeks the extradition of someone from the EU - whether in, or out of the EU, it will have to guarantee their ECHR rights, or we can whistle.

(I suggest people unfamiliar with US/Canada relations read up on Canadas refusal to extradite criminals if they could face the death penalty. For all their "sovereignty" the US has to provide assurances it will not be used.)

I'm starting to warm to the idea of pushing for a Brexit meltdown. Slew upon slew of stories that will cause Brexiteers to simply do a Mr. Creosote and explode in a shower of bile.

DG I think Brexiters, in fact nearly all Leavers, are just not listening to anything that disagrees with their nationalist unicorn viewpoint

Ohhh, thank you Rossetti - I'll read that later (a work).

I just wanted to comment on this: I'm starting to warm to the idea of pushing for a Brexit meltdown. Slew upon slew of stories that will cause Brexiteers to simply do a Mr. Creosote and explode in a shower of bile.

I visualise a parent and toddler situation. Parent keeps stating 'these are our 4 pillars, take it or leave it, no cake and eat it'. Toddler is in a rage, parent simply reiterates every so often but generally as the toddler twists itself into an ever increasing corner the parent largely stays silent and patient while it waits for reason (or a natural end) to occur.

In the above situation, at some stage the toddler will grudgingly or forceably accept, get the hiccups then fall asleep for a few hours. Many will have forgotten all about the original issue when they wake up.

I won't bother indicate who is who in that analogy...

A50 legal challenge case has been heard now:

Jo Maugham QC
‏*@JolyonMaugham*
I'd guess we're unlikely to get the result we want without appealing. But my impressions of the court system and legal profession in Scotland are overwhelmingly positive.

That Sunderland result.

Obviously a Labour loss in their heartlands gives some food for thought, but with all council by-elections, you need local knowledge to figure out the full story. A bit of Googling reveals that the by-election was called due to the death of the Labour Council leader, Paul Watson, and if you do the Google yourself you will uncover some fairly, erm, interesting stories about him, the provenance of which is unclear but if enough people believe it then that could be an explanation. Lib Dems apparently campaigned with red leaflets... all's fair in love and elections.

That said, there was apparently another 'surprise win' for the LDs against Lab in Sunderland recently, so this could be part of a trend. I have a hunch that the Cons are going to do surprisingly well in the May council elections, well enough to prop Treeza up a bit longer. Why? Two reasons. First, for some reason, local and general election results seem to be more decoupled from each other than normal (witness last year when there were council elections in the middle of a GE campaign with rather different results). Second, the electorate seems to be in the mood for voting against the status quo, and there's a lot of shit councils out there (of all colours) so we may see opposition parties in councils faring better overall relative to GE voting intention.

I am always hilariously wrong about this sort of thing.

(PS Just to continue the theme that nothing can be inferred from council results, Labour benefited from a 20% boost in Falmouth. Cornwall is traditionally a LD stronghold, though not Falmouth itself I think. Swing seemed to be at the expense of the Greens. Go figure.)

Strange things afoot. I agree with you, Eeeeeowwwfftz : we're in for a few more surprises yet!

Yes but Falmouth now has more young people with the new university than it had before. At the last election I barely saw any lib dem posters and my constituency which has vacillated between all three parties since 1997 was neck and neck race between labour and tory.

Yes but Falmouth now has more young people with the new university than it had before.

Last year, I did a lifeguard course with a lot of youngsters (I suspect I doubled the average age ). One lad was from Cornwall (more Penzance side) - he was looking to do a Camp America, so needed a lifeguard qualification. He was very down on Brexit, and said no-one his age (from Cornwall) that he knew was in favour. He was lucky as his DF is Greek, so he held dual nationality.

As you can imagine, there was a lively debate, but out of 8 people (7 students and a 30-something instructor) everyone was firmly pro-EU, anti-Brexit and spitting feathers.

And just to fan the flames of the generational divide, 3 of the students were under 18 (they'll be 18 now) and could not have voted last year, whilst another 2 couldn't vote in 2015, but could have voted in 2017.

This wasn't some secret metropolitan liberal elite dining club in Knightsbridge. It was a local leisure centre, in a big city, with local people trying to get on in life.

Open mouth ... insert foot. Rinse and repeat.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/01/warning-utter-chaos-may-ends-eu-free-movement-next-march

Campaigners for the rights of EU citizens in the UK have predicted “utter chaos” in Britain after Theresa May vowed to stop freedom of movement for all Europeans coming to the country next March.

Activists in Europe campaigning for the rights of Britons said they were “horrified” by the prime minister’s statement in China on Wednesday, saying it showed she did not understand that everything she planned for EU citizens would have a reciprocal impact on 1.2 million British citizens in Europe.

“I think many of us, British living in Europe, are horrified at the ongoing abominable treatment of EU citizens in the UK. This will only contribute further to them and us being fair game for abuse,” said Debra Williams, the head of Brexpats, a campaign group based in the Netherlands.

Rights campaigners have been quietly furious over declarations in recent weeks by Conservative MPs, including Dominic Raab, that the deal on EU citizens has been done, when several issues are yet to be resolved including key points such as freedom of movement and family reunification rights.

Williams said: “She didn’t have to say anything right now, but chose to put the knife in just as negotiations recommence.

“And what of us? We are seemingly on our own and will have to take our chances, abandoned by the government of our birth country. Jointly we are over 4 million people who, through no fault of our own, have been relegated to the second or third division in the citizenship stakes and left to languish.”

EU citizens in the UK are equally horrified. They say without a registration system in place employees, hospitals, social welfare and immigrations officials will have no way of distinguishing between those who have been in the country legally up to 29 March 2019 and new arrivals. May’s plan will also hit anyone leaving and returning to the country on holidays or business.

Nicolas Hatton, the co-founder of The3million campaign group for Europeans in the UK, said it would create “utter chaos” for EU citizens living in the UK.

The government has signalled it will introduce a new system giving EU citizens “settled status” in the UK.

The3million has previously said it is opposed to settled status and does not want the Home Office, as envisaged by May, to have anything to do with the administration of the new system because of its tendency to make errors.

In the last year the Home Office has mistakenly threatened to deport more than 100 EU citizens and the Guardian has exposed other errors including refusing applications for permanent residency cards to EU citizens, even though under EU law they were entitled to be in the country.

British in Europe, a campaign group for British nationals in the EU, said its members felt abandoned by May.

“Every time Theresa May rejects an EU proposal on citizens’ rights she has to remember that it has direct repercussions on the rights and lives of 1.2 million British people living on continental Europe. And she is also slamming more doors shut for young British people in the UK itself,” said Jane Golding, a lawyer living in Germany, who chairs the group.

Both The3million and British in Europe will meet MEPs on Thursday to discuss the matter. They will also meet Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s Brexit negotiator, who has said MEPs will veto any deal that denies rights to EU citizens on both sides of the Channel.

Williams said: “The PM is trying to have her cake and eat it and is presumably deliberately confusing the withdrawal phase with the implementation phase talks. The four freedoms are indivisible.

“If the UK wants free movement of capital, services and goods during the implementation period, then the corollary has to be free movement of people – quite apart from the fact that it seems dubious that the UK could have the mechanisms in place to do anything else during that period. Citizens should be treated on a par with goods, services and capital – if not better, on moral grounds.”

I have been following the local election results quite keenly since the Autumn of 2016. One thing I noticed quickly was that UKIP was collapsing. This was noticeable in the Sleaford Parliamentary by election, where UKIP should have come well, but came a very poor second. Labour appeared to be holding its own quite comfortably, despite the attempted Blairite coup against Corbyn, the hysterical propaganda from the Mail, Express etc. and the talking up of "Theresa's doing a good job",. So I wasn't surprised that they did rather better than TM expected in the election. As for the LibDems - they had a surge between Oct 2016 - Feb 2017 and then it seemed to fizzle out.
The Greens seem to be collapsing apart from in one or two known 'alternative' communities.

But I agree - strange things are afoot, and it's hard to draw any clear inferences from that - other than 'this lot have made a mess for xx years, we'll give someone else a turn'.

Add to that the business in Haringey, which demonstrates a disconnect between how a party's behaviour in local government can be at odds with its national position. (See also: Witney).

Since the Uk has no ID system and the old NHS card has fallen into disuse,
it will continue the current system started by this Tory govt, in which anyone who "looks" furrin or has a furrin name, may be questioned about eligibility as e.g. many cases already reported in NHS hospitals

Now, I'm sure the Irish will accord Farage every courtesy. However I wonder what Farage himself would say if a non-UK politician popped up in London to advocate Remain ? I bet he'd have an awful lot to say about it ?

If any Irish MNetters are reading, you can keep him, he's done his work here.

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-02/farage-goes-to-dublin-to-champion-irexit-as-protests-await

Could Ireland follow the U.K. out of the European Union? More than 18 months after helping win the Brexit referendum, Nigel Farage will be in Dublin to advocate just that.

The former U.K. Independence Party leader will speak at Trinity College Dublin on Friday, followed the next day by a conference advocating Ireland leave the bloc. Both events are stirring up controversy.

Neale Richmond, a senator with the ruling Fine Gael party, last month urged the public “not to engage with the conference or the false information being spun by its organizers.” Protests are being organized for his university appearance. Farage declined to comment.

As Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney pointed out in London this week, Ireland’s and the U.K.’s journeys have varied hugely since they joined the European Economic Community, as the EU was known then, at the same time in 1973. While the U.K. is on the way out, support for the EU in Ireland is higher than anywhere else, according to an EU survey published last year.

Still, Ireland has had dalliances with euro-skepticism. Almost a decade ago, voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty, designed to overhaul the bloc’s institutional framework, and finance lecturer Cormac Lucey said the nation should at least think about its ties with the EU.

Lucey is speaking at the Irexit conference on Saturday, though he isn’t involved in organizing the event.

“Because the EU worked so well for Ireland for the last three decades, we presume it will do so for the next three decades,” Lucey, who has called on Ireland to leave the euro currency, said. “I’m not in favor of leaving the EU tomorrow but we need to fundamentally reassess our relationship with it.”

Wary Organizers

Conference organizers, the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group in the European Parliament, which is led by Farage, are wary about interruptions. Anyone reserving a ticket for the conference, which is free, is warned that it is “open only to supporters of a Irish Exit from the European Union” while “unwelcome interjections from the audience may result in removal from the event.”

“There is a dogma in Irish society about the EU and the reaction to this conference has shown it very clearly,” Lucey said. “We should be able to debate these issues rationally and in the open.”

Can the organisers not see the contradiction in the two statements, "it is “open only to supporters of a Irish Exit from the European Union” alongside "We should be able to debate these issues rationally and in the open.” ?

I'm hoping Farage has made a big mistake ... as so many who have meddled in Ireland have. We assume he must be quite a clever chap, but like all clever chaps, there can be a blind spot.

If there is a sentiment for Irexit (and hopefully some folk who can educate me will comment) I would suspect it's roots are very different from the racist/sweet smell of empire/good old days groundswell that UKIP was able to (briefly) mobilise.

I've met more than one person from Ireland who has made the observation that given how much of the world has Irish connections, it would be hypocritical of them to be anti-immigration.

(Ed Byrne made a nice point about you can't throw a stone in New York without hitting an Irishman. And even if you did, you'd be arrested - by an Irishman)

In the same way never managed to translation the power of Nazism to the UK, I hope Farage can't connect with the Irish.

I loved mr bean at the end!

I hope barely anyone turns up to this farage thing. I think that he wants Irexit to a) solve the Irish border b) to give more credence to his anti EU stance and c) because all the brexiteers predicting the fall of the EU are going to look pretty silly when it doesn't happen.