Westministenders: High Drama at The Ok Coral

[RedToothBrush]

3:00 p.m. Wednesday, October 26, 1881, Tombstone, Arizona.

After months of death threats from the Cowboy Billys, their long simmering feud with the law thing came to a head. The Earp Brothers and Doc Holliday faced the criminals down in a shootout.

Tomorrow's 'sleepover' is starting to feel like the Gunfight at the OK Coral.

The outcome of the real story was three of the outlaws were killed. Another two claimed they were unarmed and ran from the fight. Virgil, Morgan, and Doc Holliday were wounded, but Wyatt Earp was unharmed.

How many Brexiteers can we expect to roll over and resign from the Cabinet and how many will surrender to May and the Pro-Business lobby? ONly time will tell.

Please place your bets for the number of resignations and the number of 'I support the PM' comments.

But don't get too excited. The showdown wasn't the end of the matter.

One of the outlaws who legged it, filed murder charges against the Earps and Doc Holliday. It took them some time for them to be acquitted.

Then Virgil Earp was ambushed and disabled in the arm later that year in December and Morgan Earp was assassinated in March 1882. Wyatt Earp, then thinking he had no other option, went on a personal vendetta to kill the outlaws and then fled the state.

Given the Tory Cabinet and the perchant for stabbing each other in the back and settling personal scores, a repeat of a wild west gun fight, really doesn't sound too wildly off the cards now does it?

Buckle up. Its time to play at Chequers.

Fox & co are desperate for a very quick deal, to be agreed now and to come into effect the day after Brexit

The only kind of trade deal that can be "negotiated" that quickly is simply when one side agrees to everything the other says and just signs on the dotted line,
i.e. a dreadful one

The choice has been Norway vs no-deal since 2016, as soon as Barnier stated the 3 EU prerequisites in phase 1.
People are only beginning to realise this - some still don't accept it

However, "no-deal" may still mean a transition period, if the EU decides it needs time to fully adjust its supply chains and financial services
and the UK also wants this (to give more time for Fox to negotiate his wonderful deals with the RoW - clue this won't happen)

Fox & co are desperate for a very quick deal, to be agreed now and to come into effect the day after Brexit

If that were really the case, you'd think they would have actually done something to show it ?

Like their jobs ?

Sorry, Brexiteers - you've been sold down the river (again). Watch what the priest does, not what he says (as DF says). In this case, the priest has done fuck all for a year. So not that "desperate" then ?

Tick.

Tock.

if the EU decides it needs time to fully adjust its supply chains and financial services

I'm sensing the EU has decided already, and there's a lot going on under the water which the UK press simply can't report on because of it's own agenda. I suspect no deal could happen a lot faster than the "they need us more than we need them" brigade could envisage.

In fact, I would not be surprised to learn that tucked away in some dusty vaults there are various plans through the EU9 for dealing with a UK withdrawal ... we were never regarded as completely onside in the 70s and 80s while Mrs T's handbag was around.

Thanks red
Trying to keep up during an autoimmune flare. At least is always know where to come for that

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/thousands-of-shops-face-brexit-risk-border-delays-supply-chain-ts9tqvvcj

Almost 13,000 small retail businesses are at “high risk” of collapse if Britain leaves the European Union without a deal, industry leaders have said.

A “hard Brexit” in March could break the supply chain, leaving food rotting at the border and limiting the choice and quality of products on supermarket shelves, according to the British Retail Consortium.

In a letter to Theresa May and Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, the trade body warned that millions of British consumers and tens of thousands of European food producers will face “damaging consequences” if officials do not strike a deal.

“This supply chain is fragile,” it wrote. “Failure to reach a deal will mean new border controls and ‘non-tariff barriers’, through regulatory checks, that will create…

(contd)

Now the repel bill's through, and ministers can choose when they want to crash us out, could we crash out in time for the kickball tomorrow?

Constitutional experts, do you know when the repel act allows for unilateral executive edict to crash us out? The member for High Wycombe posted a very spooky picture of himself signing a statutory instrument this week and I was wondering if that was a sign of things to come.

Constitutional experts, do you know when the repel act allows for unilateral executive edict to crash us out?

Any "crash out" would surely involve cutting the A50 period short ? Which means abrogating the UKs obligations under an international treaty.

Do the Henry VIII powers allow for that ?

I thought they did. DGR, and am suspecting the slapstick pantomime of so much this week is a prelude. Green or Maugham wrote a great analysis of it when it came out and I still can't find the article.

Exclusive: The UK government has turned down two weeks' worth of Brexit negotiating time, despite calling for talks to accelerate.
Theresa May said last week that she wants talks to increase in "pace and intensity" after the UK and EU failed to make significant progress in talks at last week's European Council summit.
However, talks will not start again until Monday, July 16, because the UK is "not available" until then, a senior EU source has told Business Insider.
May's government will instead spend today at May's official retreat in Chequers negotiating with each other on Brexit.
Labour described the government's decision not to spend this week and next in Brexit talks with the EU as "deeply disturbing."

uk.businessinsider.com/theresa-may-government-turns-down-2-weeks-of-brexit-negotiating-time-2018-7

Sam Coates Times @SamCoatesTimes
Exc: Boris Johnson met David Cameron last night

It’s claimed that the former PM persuaded BJ that the Theresa May compromise plan is the only one that Parliament will accept. “So Boris is to behave” says source.

We will find out for sure later....

Solved on fields of Eton?

May met with Cameron and Major a couple of weeks ago. Sounds a lot like that meeting might have been about 'how to deal with annoying eurosceptics' if that report is right. Though why she's asking Cameron who didnt manage Johnson when he was PM is another question.

Thanks Red. The only hope I have is a Norway For Now fudge and it is a faint hope that is fading fast....

I thought Bojo always did the opposite of whatever Cameron said.

Sam Coates Times @SamCoatesTimes
This - from a snr gvt source - extraordinary.

Cabinet ministers who resign will immediately be stripped of the cars and abandoned in mid Buckinghamshire

For those who turn down @bbclaurak offer of a lift, here’s the source naming the name of the local Chequers taxi firm

Hahahahahahahaha! She's holding them hostage!

Election Data @election_data
THEY SHOULD BE FORCED TO TAKE A BUS! #PMQs

Even better. Tip the press off as to where the rural bus stop is too.

Laura Kuenssberg @bbclaurak
Well this is interesting....

Nick Clegg @nick_clegg
I hate to say this, but Brexiters would be right to reject PM’s plan. Dual EU/UK tariffs would create vast red tape, smugglers would boom,Parliament would be humiliated. MPs would rubber stamp goods/agri rules from Brussels - right to refuse would never be used as costs too high.
Better to put this costly, bureaucratic, unworkable proposal out of its misery ASAP. Whatever Brexit means, it can’t be this.

Alberto Nardelli @AlbertoNardelli
1/2 Key par imho in this @bbclaurak piece (www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44728807) is this:
2/2 If PM May gets her plan through cabinet, I wouldn’t assume a yes/no from EU/capitals but plenty of ‘it’s a starting point, let’s talk’. In that sense, direction of travel of UK position, and how position has evolved, and might evolve further, is worth keeping in mind
Additional point: another issue of course is time - between now and October, and now and March 2019. But worth remembering, on future relationship it’s a political declaration that’s needed not a final deal. What’s required now is NI backstop

The Columnist @Sime0nStylites
1. This is interesting. Let’s consider the possible EU responses.
2. (The following assumes that a position along the lines of what’s been rumoured so far emerges intact from Chequers)
3. (i) Unequivocal Acceptance - It’s a Deal! We can exclude this outcome straightaway given the various statements to date re indivisibility, the Irish backstop etc etc.
4. (ii) Outright Rejection - Non, there are only two choices. This is moderately likely but let’s consider the consequences.
5. Presumably, the govt collapses and a prominent wing of the Cons party advocates firmly for Canada w/out the current backstop, rapidly moving to No Deal (to avoid the backstop entirely).
6. In this case, the Chequers concessions are forgotten. They’ve been rejected and are therefore no longer relevant.
7. A period of instability begins. How that ends, no one knows.
8. It’s a Start - ie yes but no but. Here the EU takes the concessions but does not agree to the proposal in advance of a formal response.
9. This approach has three advantages (a) the concessions are ‘banked’ (ii) near term instability is averted (iii) option retained to revert later with the ‘no but’.
10. Anyone’s guess of course. /ends

My reading of that; its not about the detail, its about the direction of travel and how much resistance that meets.

Laura Kuenssberg @bbclaurak
Whatever you think of Clegg's views on EU and the referendum, he is one of the pretty small number of UK politicians who genuinely understands the institutions - his assessment of the Number 10 plan is not pretty

Agree completely. Clegg has been (the only) politician who has been spot on about it. His prediction in mid June 2016 has almost come true to the letter.

He notably was one of the few MPs who did not vote to hold the EU referendum in the first place. (Most LDs voted for it. His name is notable by its absence. I checked Hansard to see who did vote for it and was surprised).

Euro Guido @EuroGuido
"I agree with Nick..."

Election Data @election_data
DIRECTIONS TO LONDON FROM CHEQUERS: 15 minute walk from Chequers to the Russell Arms, then wait two hours for the next 321 bus to Aylesbury. Get on the first train to Marylebone. About four hours to cover the forty miles

If only.

Ladbrokes Politics @LadPolitics
Ladbrokes: 9/4 any cabinet minister quits before end Sunday.

www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2018/07/06/this-is-why-may-s-third-way-brexit-compromise-doesn-t-work
This is why May's third-way Brexit compromise doesn't work

David Henig @DavidHenigUK
The best thing you will read on Brexit today is this - by @csgmoore - on the services single market and why regulation has made the market

Words are not minced, examples are given. Services has been a little studied topic (though I wrote on the trade agreements aspects here..

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/economics-and-finance/will-brexit-boost-british-services-trade-dont-count-on-it
Will Brexit boost British services trade? Don’t count on it
A former Assistant Director at the Department for International Trade is sceptical that new FTAs can transform our services exports

And it's all summed up below

Is history going to analyse this as one of the most inept negotiations ever?

• 2 years and 2 weeks after the Referendum

• 15 months after voluntarily invoking the 2 year ticking clock of A50

• 7 months after supposedly agreeing a backstop position for NI

• 3 months before the final Withdrawal Agreement needs to be defined in detail, so that the respective E27 countries can agree it through their own systems

• Less than 9 months before the potential cliff edge of 29 March and the prospect of a No Deal blockaded country

and the Cabinet is only NOW trying not necessarily with any great hope of success to work out the UK's position so that it can "start a conversation" with Brussels

I wish I could say that my gast has never been so flabbered but in recent years the bar for that has been lowered to nil

Jason Groves @JasonGroves1
Re emergency reshuffle plans, I hear chief whip met Dom Raab, Rishi Sunak, Steve Baker, Suella Fernandes + Kit Malthouse 'in quick succession' yesterday to discuss their views - and ambitions...

Hahahahaha oh how evil! Cup tie them with their own ambition!!!

Alex Wickham @WikiGuido
Not sure any ambitious Brexiter who sells out and replaces a resigning Cabinet Brexiter will have much of a career left afterwards

Bollocks! They will. A week in politics and all that. They'll take the risk. Too tempting for them.