Westminstenders: Break Up or Make Up?

[RedToothBrush]

The next week or so appears to be yet another crunch point (not that any of these crunch points have actually resolved anything so far).

The EU is set to outline the plan for Ireland. Which everyone thought had already been outlined and agreed already. And it had been admitted was legally binding.

Except apparently we don't want to do that, and we are now crying about how the EU want to break up Britain (nothing to do with England wanting to leave the EU and Scotland and NI wanting to stay in it of course).

Jeremy Corbyn has now apparently decided that the customs union is a good idea. David Davis and Liam Fox have responded by saying that this would stop us making our own trade deals. Yes this has obviously stopped Turkey, and why aren't we doing as much trade with China etc as Germany anyway? A vote in the HoC looms before Easter. Will Tory rebels support.

Will Jeremy Corbyn bow to pressure over the single market too? The customs union alone does not stop the border issue in Ireland. Nor does it stop ridiculous queues at Dover. I'm not sure Corbyn is one for listening though. He's got a whiff of power and democracy and reality is just a hindrance to utopia.

As for the Great Repeal Bill. Word has it, its not going too clever in the HoL. The conservatives had something of a show of strength with an unusual number turning up for the debate. But few on the backbenches were willing to speak in favour of...

It all feels like we are making no progress at all. We are still bleating on about cherry picked deals as if this is a negotiation. Its not.

No-one knows what Labour are planning. I think the main thing they are planning is the strategy of standing well back, while the Conservative Brexit explodes. Well enough back that the right-wing media (and crazy Brexiteers) can't blame them for the explosion.

Sadly, if previous performance is anything to go on, they are likely to be disappointing. Brexit is, for me, a catalogue of ongoing disappointment. I've given up hope that anyone anywhere near leadership is actually going to reveal a cunning and brilliant plan.

There really does seem to be a real absence of politically brilliant leadership in the actual leadership of Labour at the moment.

I suspect JC - or rather, Starmer, who is reeling him in on Brexit - wanted to widen the debate and break the deadlock in UK political discussion on Brexit.
It's just too dangerous politically atm to advocate SM

Already, his Momentum chums are saying that FOM can be positive

I hope / think there is a 50:50 chance that over the next few months Labour will feel able to present a policy of SM + a Customs arrangement.
That combination could be negotiated to deal with all the major problems

It would be a clear alternative to the official govt policy and might well get sufficient Tory support to make May back down.

Do you mean in or fully aligned with?

Having lived in Texas, I know just how much explaining has to be done for the average Texan to comprehend life outwith the US.

Agnes, a good deal of explaining has to be done for the average Texan to comprehend life in the rest of the US too.

The language of hate and division is all they have to fall back on

Nadine Dorries
@NadineDorries
Body language of traitor Major sat next to her is revealing.

True dat math. And our bit was quite cosmopolitan.

Pain - Nadine Dorries is a skidmark of such colossal proportions that I quickly googled her to see what her majority was and if there is any chance of her being voted out whenever the next election happens. Sadly not, but I found this wiki paragraph that gives you a a very accurate measure of the woman:

Employment of family members
Dorries' daughter was among the highest-earning family members employed by MPs with a salary of £40,000-45,000 as an office manager. This is despite the fact that her daughter lived 96 miles away from the office. Subsequently, her sister was taken on as senior secretary with a salary of £30,000-35,000.[139][140] Ben Glaze, a journalist with the Sunday Mirror, was threatened by Dorries on Twitter for asking questions about the MP's employment practices: "Be seen within a mile of my daughters and I will nail your balls to the floor... using your own front teeth. Do you get that?"

How unlike the home life of our own dear queen

(But startlingly similar to trump and his despot friends)

"traitor Major"
Is that what Dorries called the former leader of her party, who was PM 1990 - 1997 ?

If that's how the Brexit Ultras regard their own former leader, I shudder to think how they would treat any other opposition to their master plan.
Especially if it all ends in the kind of disaster that RNorth keeps predicting, empty shelves, exports hammered

After the expenses scandal showed how greedy many MPs are,
none should be threatening journalists investigating their expenses / payments to relatives.

MPs like Dorries multiply the salary they receive from taxpayers, by bringing various family members into the feeding trough

Dorries seems to have been far less interested in defending MPs who are threatened with rape and murder for expressing preferences to Remain, or even for soft Brexit,
i.e. for doing their job of representing their constituents

On the Today prog this morning the presenter (Sarah M? not sure) kept referring to Derry/Londonderry as simply Londonderry.
I thought the BBC was generally careful when naming the city. Is this just carelessness, or ignorance - or perhaps a new policy of not giving a stuff

Forgot the ?

How people can continue to elect her to represent them is a mystery to me.

Perhaps, sadly, she does represent the people who elect her (and her particular faction of Leavers)?

Book day apparently today? Virginia Woolf's diary pre and during WW2 is not dissimilar to our observations on these threads. War entries in second half of the article.

www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/17/specials/woolf-diary5exc.html

Was talking about Frank Field to OH recently. I mentioned how he turned on H. Benn rather than the bunch opposite. Then his TV performance speaking over Stella Creasy and insinuating she was going to be 'ratting' on people.

OH said he was a Liverpudlian who recently wrote an article in The Sun and that told him all he wanted to know about FF.

Frank Field represents Liverpool. N. Dorries from Liverpool and article in The Sun too.

That tweet is so badly written it's hard to understand what she means.

It's interesting how rattled the brexiteers are. JRM was very disparaging about Major. We had the thread that went pouf yesterday, trying to blame the EU for the issues with the Irish border. I think it is harder for them to dismiss John Major. He's a tory for a start. And he doesn't have as many skeletons as Tony Blair.

Susan, is that the thread about how the EU were trying to break up the Union? Did MN pull it? Why??!

I think they thought the poster wasn't genuine - for a starters they hadn't a clue about the Republic of Ireland, so I suspect it was a troll.

Moving abroad, briefly, I was amused to see that Trump has managed to "stun" the numbnuts that have supported him by ... what's the word .. volte face ? (that's 2) on gun control.

He's basically thrown a large part of his support base under a bus.

That's the problem when you elect "mavericks".

Ah gee. Missed that thread. What sorts of things were being posted?

Glad for people in the US if there is some better control.

Sorry, I should have laid out the whole thing. For more context, Dorries' tweet was in response to this:

Dancing Palace Guard‏
@DancerGuard
Here’s EU-federalist plotter John Major having the smile wiped off his face by Maggie Thatcher’s comments in 1990.
Watch as Maggie exposes and trashes the political EU federal project, causing Major to squirm in his seat.

twitter.com/DancerGuard/status/968945755632357377

If only May would find her more bohemian side and declare Brexit to be a harmful act that we will abandon immediately. Perhaps she could run through some wheat fields first and build up to it?

What sorts of things were being posted?

Denial that the Troubles ever existed. GFA pointless. Lots of anti-Irish sentiment, too. All from the OP - funnily enough, his/her first thread on MN. (And last, hopefully.)