Westminstenders: Rebel or Reveal

[RedToothBrush]

The EU Withdrawal Bill made it through the Commons. Though May did not manage it unscathed.

In an attempt to divide and conquer the Rebels, May might have damaged trust. We shall find out. The Grieve Amendment faces the Lords. We also will see if the Lords will back down on their amendments or apply some new ones for the Commons to deal with in Parliamentary Ping Pong.

Aaron Banks has been exposed as being pally with the Russian Embassy in a plot twist that absolutely everyone saw coming.

Meanwhile the EU thinks we have already run out of time and is preparing options to extend talks beyond the a50 deadline. These include having MEPs for the 2019 - 2024 session.

There is also growing talk around Europe that freedom of movement in its current form is unsustainable. Ironically we might see the EU adopt something akin to Cameron's pre-referendum proposals as the EU reforms.

Theresa May has also announced - at a moment when she is looking particularly weak - a new tax for the NHS, cunningly disguised in spin as 'the Brexit dividend'. Of course shareholders don't always get dividends and at times of poor economic performance instead might be asked to stump up extra capital...Expect to see buses with £350 million of the side just in time for the next general election cycle.

And so the Zombie PM limbers on towards the end of the summer session and the relative safety of the summer holidays. More drama, cringing and disbelief guaranteed before we get there.

Im on her patches but have got a stash built up

Oops! Post reported. Sorry

Can we find out who the tory rebels were?

You can download the Commons votes app. It's pretty good although I wish it'd include abstentions.

@Bigchoc
I've said that before too. It's all down to business confidence and the gov have thrown it to the wind.
The fact that livelihoods of thousands of people are represented by a few figures on 'stock sheets' disgusts me but that is the way so much of the world works. Oil giants getting in a huff about something and fuel prices rocket.
UK, I AM Baldrick

All I can say is, I don't think there will be national unity again in my lifetime now. After the Olympics in 2012, which I thought really brought the whole country together, in a way I had never seen before, I think it is terribly sad that things have come to this. Mind you it must have been very fickle that unity.

I'm not sure there has been for a long, long time. Money was diverted from infrastructure improvements in the north to fund the Olympics.

Geoffrey Howe wanted a 'managed decline' of Liverpool - it was Heseltine who stepped up to invest.

As someone who went to a Catholic school surrounded by people with Irish surnames, I've never felt I was completely acceptable to the English. I'm pretty ok about that

I've just realised why the change of heart about medicinal Cannabis:

Post Brexit the new plan is to get the population too stoned to notice the shit they are in.

I just reread Barnier’s press statement 8th June 2018 - it is a bit pointed !

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-releaseSTATEMENT-18-41055_fr.htm

"Ladies and Gentlemen,
"You have all seen the UK's customs paper, which we received yesterday.
I welcomed the publication of this paper.

It is good to see the UK engaging with us by proposing text."
< as distinct from May making meaningless speeches >

www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/we-can-get-through-brexit-if-were-high-says-hague-20180619174406

@Andrew_Adonis
The government is forcing the Lords to meet this evening, before we have even had a chance to read and properly consider the official report of Commons proceedings earlier, to vote through the EU Withdrawal Bill. Acting in character: with contempt for parliament

commonarewe Tue 19-Jun-18 23:54:38
"Christian values" that lead to a diminution in the relative proportion of Christians in a country are the definition of self-defeating.

"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened." (Matt. 13: 31 - 33)

It's not a numbers game.

Thinking about Airbus wings, once they are gone from the UK, they will stay gone. Supposing we crash out, realise what a mistake it was, and petition to get back in and are allowed to do so, the Chinese, or whoever make the Airbus wings, aren't going to give them back.
It seems obvious, so I don't know why I posted really.

Withdrawal Bill has passed the Lords. It goes for royal ascent tonight.

It's done.

Richard North makes a good point in his latest tweet essay. It’s a choice between trade or sovereignty we can’t have both.

peregrina All the tech business, research and much of the other financial services,
once moved from the UK, are probably lost forever

So much for the Rebellion. However, I am still marching on Saturday. I will nail my colours to the mast. The time will come when we will be looking for people to blame. I will be able to hold my head up high and say that I protested. You can bet your bottom dollar that May, Gove, Johnson, Fox, Farage and all the sorry crowd will be nowhere to be seen.

It's done

A victory for the government, a loss for the UK. Party before country.

Verhofstadt at the HoC, Exiting the European Union Committee today:

(what he actually said, not the Heil hysteria)

https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/1c7ad1c1-eb93-4e4a-865b-fb42305c3071

He said that
the framework for the future UK-EU relationship would be included in a PD (Political Declaration),
to be produced alongside the Withdrawal Agreement

Answering a question, he said this PD could be made legally binding by being included as an Annex to the WA.

He also said the content of the PD needed to be sufficiently precise and detailed so that just one round of negotiations would suffice and parliamentary ratification would follow.

The alternative would be negotiations on multiple stand-alone bilateral agreements plus multiple ratification passes

• it is this which he said could take "up to 10 years, up to 20 years"

A victory for the government, a loss for the UK. Party before country
It is sadly much, much worse than that.

imo, DD at least - and the stupider members of the Cabinet (most, including May) - are still expecting the EU to blink at 10:59 pm (UK time) on 29 March 2019
and produce all the cake

imo - am I too optimistic ? - the 3 most likely possibilities tend to end up with Norway+, but vary in how much pain along the way:

Either
events in the next few months - major businesses pulling out, pound crashing - make the Uk blink first and start negotiating Norway+
or
the EU later offers a transition deal on "pay, no say" terms, just to complete its own prepping for no-deal.
This may either be taken - wrongly - by Brexiters as the EU giving in, so the UK crashes out afterwards,
or the (possibly new) govt starts urgently negotiating Norway+
or
the UK Brexits with no / a WTO deal, then finds itself in deep shit and the EU fast-tracks an emergency transition to Norway+

It is also going directly to lead to the break up of the UK.

While that is something I personally have been wanting for c20 years, this is not the way it should be happening - at a massive cost to all the constituent countries of the UK

amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/20/two-tottenham-tower-blocks-at-risk-of-catastrophic-collapse?__twitter_impression=true
Two Tottenham housing blocks at risk of catastrophic collapse
Exclusive: 200 families are to be urgently moved out of blocks on Broadwater Farm estate after post-Grenfell safety checks

The destitution of the poor and the opportunities for disaster capitalists that this presents....

The state is failing.

the UK Brexits with no / a WTO deal, then finds itself in deep shit and the EU fast-tracks an emergency transition to Norway+
I’ve been wondering about that possibility
How far is the EU going to go once the uk is collapsing undervWTO terms.
For them, having a country that is so unstable politically and economically wouod be nightmare and so far, the EU has always been stepping in.
So if the U.K. was ending up with food rationing, economy collapsing, no plane or medicines etc etc, how would the EU step in is a good question.

And the cost to the EU.
The trade agreements now with the UK will have to be renegotiated and if the companies move there will be relocation costs.
Where does this leave the NI/Border/GFA issue? What is the 'plan' for that?

I can't think of much 'geological' or environmental wealth that Greece can manage apart from olive growing and sunny holidays

It rains a lot in Ireland and there is little or no mining of anything.

Historically, Ireland was deforested (see 'British Empire') and its agricultural land, of which there was plenty, turned into a cash cow for absentee and resident landlords from UMC to the aristocracy (see 'British Empire' again, though there were many native Irish landlords too). Irish people emigrated in huge numbers, as did the Greeks.

Ireland has capitalised on many factors including the rain to create a prospering tourist industry and has invested heavily in education beginning in the 1960s to the extent that it is the EU's biggest exporter of pharmaceuticals and also exports medical equipment and chemicals, and the processed food industry has become a behemoth. The economy has changed utterly from primary agricultural production to processing and STEM based industries.

I am not sure how much investment Greece has put into its education system.

I am not sure either how much focus the UK has placed on accessible STEM education at third level. Ireland has its Institutes of Technology, formerly Regional Technical Colleges, and a history of centralised planning in the educational sector.

www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/08/t-levels-aim-to-improve-technical-education-and-improve-uk-productivity
I think the UK is still getting it wrong with this focus on the secondary sector.

Irish students do the Leaving Cert after five years of study plus a en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Year Transition Year in 75% of schools, a broad based exam-oriented curriculum, and can choose from both traditional universities and fourteen technical third level options.