Westminstenders: Don't Panic!

[RedToothBrush]

It's official

Brexit is like an episode of Dads Army with the government, being Captain Mainwaring's trusty band of elite forces doing battle against the evil Mr Barnier.

Yesterday Parliament gave back control to the executive as it surrendered parliamentary sovereignty to Janus faced May. Grieve, it has to be said, truly did look like a broken man as he gave his speech in the commons. Not that we should have too much sympathy. After all he did just put party before country.

So where are we now? The ERG are happy. They have successfully bullied enough until everyone else gave up and folded. They now have no incentive to compromise, as they know that no one can stand up to them. They want no deal, and it's no deal they will force.

The EU are thoroughly fed up and it's difficult to see them do anything but cut us loose saying Brexit means Brexit, this is what you wanted. They have stepped up planning for no deal and their plans were already much more advanced than ours.

We go into the next round of talks with a solution to the Irish Border looking further away than ever. Not helped by the fact that brexit nationalism is restricted to England alone, with many being happy to let NI be sunk into the Irish sea and the favour the rebuilding of Hadrian's wall in order to keep out the foreigners.

It's hard to resist simply sitting down wailing "we doomed". But try to resist and keep saying, you are against this crap. If only so history books don't just say we all agreed to this clusterfuck.

Here have a fluffy bunny to help comfort you.

Nick Eardley @ nickeardleybbc
NEW: I’m hearing the SNP have gone cold on Heathrow expansion.

Party at Westminster isn’t happy with lack of detail on benefits for Scotland and is unlikely to back the Government in key vote tomorrow.

Expect they’ll abstain, or potentially even vote against.

The LDs, of course, are anti it.

Labour are also against it, but official line is that they don't expect all MPs to vote against it...

The SNP move though, might very well throw spanners in the works...

Yup Swedish I bet CCHQ are making notes.
@dokuz8_EN
CHP Istanbul MP Eren Erdem: "They plan to give the so called balcony speech for a massive manipulation to ensure that everyone leaves their ballot duties. YSK has stopped entering new data. They are solely interested in convincing people to leave the ballots unattended."

@HDNER
LIVE - "Currently the Supreme Electoral Board's system shows that votes in 37 percent of ballot boxes have been counted. But Anadolu Agency data cited on television channels claim 85 percent of them have been counted," CHP candidate İnce says hry.yt/uQ2sS

@scsazak
Opposition parties are reporting serious discrepancies between their ballot counts and the results being reported. Quoting one senior opposition official's words to me: "It's almost as if we're watching results from a different country."

@keeptalkingGR
3 German citizens from Cologne arrested in SE #Turkey. They were invited as unofficial 'election observers' by Kurdish HDP.

@SocialMediaZeal
Turkey elections: Six arrested for 'insulting Erdogan' on social media ahead of major national polls - The Independent dlvr.it/QYLrhx

Isn't 'Law and Order' an old Nixon mantra? And it didn't mean law or order.

@dlepeska
Erdogan's share falling slowly, if steadily, now at 52.28% with 61.5% of boxes counted. Was 52.4% about five minutes ago.

And now David Allen Green is tweeting duckling pictures cos everything else is so grim....

I wouldn't hold your breath about Turkey. Rumor is 79million voted. 59 million are registered to vote.

Trouble is most people in this country are frighteningly politically ignorant and unengaged - haven't got a clue about how political institutions operate, their different roles etc. They'll proudly admit their disinterest in politics like a badge of honour. - my dp being one of them ! Just look at general and local election turnouts - consistently abysmal ! So that makes them easy targets for manipulation by papers like the mail and express with their right wing rhetoric.

The problem is general ignorance of economics, finance, and how business operates, plus an approach to the teaching of history that guarantees that nobody understands how the institutions evolved and what principles were developed at each step along the way.

Obviously a PPE degree is no guarantee of insight into any of that. In a country that has a 'constitution' that is organic rather than written, there is no excuse for the detachment or the ignorance or the educational approach that leaves millions of people without any idea of the interplay of law and politics.

There is too much political game playing - partisan posturing, rosettes, speechifying, and blather. And British political discourse faces firmly into the past (not an accurate version of the past, but a myth).

re why many workers at Airbus and Nissan voted Leave:

I read that many in their 50s & early 60s think they will retire on a nice big redundancy payout,
BUT
Did they miscalculate, or have I misread the rules ?

I'd expect in such circumstances that the companies would pay the statutory minimum - as the unions would have no leverage - which is not very big in the UK

• Except for those very near retirement, this won't bring a comfortable lifestyle until pension at age 66/67:

https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/redundancy-pay

•	half a week’s pay for each full year you were under 22
•	one week’s pay for each full year you were 22 or older, but under 41
•	one and half week’s pay for each full year you were 41 or older

Length of service is capped at 20 years.

If you were made redundant on or after 6 April 2018, your weekly pay is capped at £508 and
the maximum statutory redundancy pay you can get is £15,240.

In the face of a hard Brexit, could the government even finance mass redundancies?

I agree, math
The ignorance of how politics works is one thing

What both the public and politicians lack almost totally is an understanding of how international trade works and how developed economies function.
It's just not like bargaining at a bazaar or a used car dealer, as Boris, DD, Fox et al seem to think.

It is alarming how few people realise that most developed countries, including the UK, are bound in a web of laws and agreements with trading partners, international agencies etc

which enables each country to participate in the global economy, transport systems, agencies…
It's what delivers life as we know it, in a developed country.

I have always referred to the Ultras WTO / No Deal dream as "Year Zero"
because the Kampuchean Communist regime is the only one I can think of that ripped up a sophisticated status quo and deliberately tried to turn back the clock several decades.

The Uk would be naked in the world, shorn of all trade agreements, membership of many essential international agencies, shorn of the right to certify its own goods to international standards.
This is not the same as turning the clock back to the UK of the 1970s, even if that were desirable.

The company finances redundancies, but the statutory limit is that £15k

Unions can sometimes negotiate better than the minimum terms,
but in the case of a company moving abroad, the unions have almost no leverage

@Bigchoc
Peter Lilley on Any Questions was saying that certification (wing components) is not a problem as long as designs are not changed and parts had been supplied and accepted previously. I may have a bit of this wrong but is it quite as you say? There is still a heck of a lot of other agreements that would need to be sorted of course so it is bot the complete answer.

James Patrick @ j_amesp
If you were in any doubt, Putin’s plan is to use the Trump asset to put America out of action for at least a generation. Britain too. And domestically they’ve been prepping for traditional warfare against a vastly weakened EU and NATO allies. It’s not too late yet. But soon.

And right now, the US and UK are being crushed to powder. Turned into brutal effigies of what they’ve bragged about conquering since the 1940s.

We have very little time to stop this. Europe will be shared by the US and Russia. The Cold War worked for both countries. Then the EU formed to create a new power rival. With the US stepping out of other international affairs as a diplomat, China claims the Pacific...

Where did our 'friendly' little visitor disappear off to?

I was just coming to post that James Patrick tweet.

Christ, I hope he’s wrong. I so desperately want him to be a paranoid fantasist.

This is all so surreal. And terrifying.

John McCormack @ McCormackJohn
Third poll in a row showing Republican Rick Scott leading Democrat Bill Nelson in Florida

Andrew Neil @ afneil
Republican chances of holding on to Senate with some comfort is growing.

They will hold it. Approval of Trump is high amongst Republicans. Trump is prepping for election now with his rhetoric. It's authoritarian playbook.

Christ, I hope he’s wrong.

Reading how things are shifting and moving, I think the way things are aligning, they are increasingly moving in that direction rather than away from it.

@54321 Like all the Ultra politicians, Lilley is either very confused and / or or lying through his teeth

They bloody do this every interview and it's infuriating, but the interviewer never knows enough to call them out on it

I read what the actual legal documents say (helpfully referenced by RNorth before) - Lilley obviously hasn't bothered

North today succintly demolished Lilley on certifications and references the documents source again:

http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=86911

"…where it comes to uncomfortable truths, the "Ultras" have their ways of dealing with them.
They lie.

This was Peter (now Lord) Lilley's response on Friday's BBC Radio 4 Any Questions.
Claiming he had "looked up the law", he told his audience that EU law said that organisations like Airbus or any of its suppliers outside in a state outside the EU could retain their certification
if the EASA "has determined that the system in that state includes the same independent level of checking of compliance as provided by the regulations".

The actual law is Regulation (EC) No 216/2008, with Article 12 (currently) stating that the Agency or the aviation authorities in the Member State "may issue certificates on the basis of certificates issued by aeronautical authorities of a third country, as provided for in recognition agreements between the Community and that third country".

In other words,

there must be a bilateral recognition agreement between the EU and the UK before certification can be accepted.
Without a deal, certificates issued by the CAA cannot be valid in EU/EEA Member States"

< Lilley's an arsehole, but a liar or an idiot, that is the question >

Red do you mean in the direction where he’s wrong or right?

This is why Airbus went public in desperation and will move abroad eventually, if there is not deal.

Also why some other manufacturers are prepping too, but quietly, because they don't want to be branded as traitors

(many Uk businesses remain in blissful ignorance, believing - like the public - that no govt would deliberately risk a catastrophe.
Too many managers can only work within the framework that they know and are quite ignorant of how much that framework depends on EU membership )

54321 It's not just aircraft and their components:
No British airport, including Heathrow, would be certified either.
So no civil aircraft of any kind could land from other countries, or take off to fly to them

@Bigchoc
Thank you for that answer. You have again gone above and beyond, shame the people that are supposed to be in charge aren't even half as diligent. The piece you put up was what I had heard.
Do you (or any others) have a view on who the UK will 'cosy up' to (in an under the boot sort of way)?

I can appreciate why many companies would not show their hand, at least before now, as business confidence relies on not revealing your situation or what you are planning, or rather what your future direction might be.
Does the same logic and certification apply to shipping and ports too? I would guess to some extent although insurance might be cancelled?

Fox and probably Bojo want to poodle up to the USA.

Many Ultras think the UK can just go it alone, as in Empire 2.0 or Singapore on Thames:
"Britannia Unchained"

imo
"Britannia Unhinged" !

I mean, his theory is not unlikely....

Have you seen Hilton Maugham's latest crowd funding case about indentured servants. You get training for 'free' and then are bound to a company for two years unless you repay fee for the training - you have to take work where ever they send you, and their obligation to provide a job is completely on their terms. To leave the company you have to pay the exit fee.

Unless Maugham wins this case, I fear this will become very common indeed as a means to prevent a skills drain. DH has done well with his career because he has changed jobs regularly and this freedom has helped increase his wage. Without that freedom it will also depress wages.

It's alarming. Expect government to introduce them for healthcare if Maugham fails btw.