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Brexit

Westministenders: May's Turd Way covered in Donald's Glittery Tickertape from his Parade

984 replies

RedToothBrush · 10/07/2018 17:29

Where next?

Auditions for chief turd polisher to Mrs May are in full action, whilst those who don't believe in the turd, wade about knee deep in their own shit, still searching for that illusive plan for Brexit which doesn't stink to high heaven of crap.

After the dual resignation of Davis and Johnson, amongst the stench there is an air of uncertainity and expectation of all hell breaking loose.

In the last 48 hours we have been told that

  1. May is more secure having crushed the brexiteers,
  2. May about to be ousted by a no confidence vote, triggering a leadership election,
  3. The Tory Party are about to split,
  4. Brexiteers are in disarray fighting amongst themselves,
  5. We will remain in the EU,
  6. We get an EEA deal,
  7. We will get no deal,
  8. A People's vote is inevitable and
  9. There will be a General Election.

Which only serves to merely highlight just how little of a clue ANYONE has about what happens next.

What bothers me now, is that Johnson seems not to have surfaced yet and there are rumours that Gove has gone to ground, whilst Donald Trump is practically on the plane and is stirring the pot praising Johnson.

Instead we seem to have a series of junior ministers and Tory HQ figures quitting in a long drawn out coordinated toy throwing out of the pram exercise, to try and get what hard brexiteers want.

If I had to hazard a guess at the general silence from key figures, I might be tempted to say that someone is going to use Trump's visit to throw a political grenade and actively invite him to endorse them.

That might sound ridiculous given that the public hates Trump, but that loses sight of the fact that the people who will vote for the next leader of the Tory Party are overwhelming authoritarian leaning and likely to be those who like Trump and would be impressed by such a move.

I note this tweet today from the wise Sarah Kendzior:

Sarah Kendzior @sarahkendzior
"There are parallels to past authoritarianism, but what's happening with Trump, in the digital age, is new and transnational. The president's loyalty is not necessarily to a state but to foreign leaders and multinational criminal alliances. The state is just something to sell."

It is clear that others in the parliamentary party will be very alarmed at the prospect. There were Tory MPs who were openly tweeted how please that disgusting Johnson had gone and are no fans of Trump.

May still seems to think that she can get her plan through and approved by the EU in its current form. The White Paper is due on Thursday.

Much speculation is that it will be significant if she fails to produce this on time, as she will have capitulated to the Brexiteers. And this will lead to the EU just giving up on us anyway.

She also announced to the Cabinet today, that preparations for No Deal were to be stepped up significantly.

We still are left wondering who, she is stitching up; the Brexiteers whose heads are currently exploding or the friends she keeps closest to her (friends? or ideological enemies).

The problem is that there just no other viable way forward at the moment, as the country is divided, both Labour and the Conservatives are divided and are more interested in their own future than that of the party and there are far too many ambitious 'celebrity MPs' who want to make their mark. No one gives a shit about ordinary workers or business. Plus there is the divine observation that DGRossetti made at the end of the last thread: The biggest obstacle to Brexit has been Brexiteers

The grab for post-Brexit power shows the whole of Westminister up as the cess pit of self interest it is, with Boris Johnson merely its biggest figure head.

Wait until the GFA officially has its head put on the chopping block awaiting its fate. Perhaps we can flog NI to Donald and get a Brexit Dividend afterall.

I must admit to finding it hard to have a view that is altogether different to this:
James Patrick @J_amesp
There is no way back from all of this. The next seven days simply decide how badly - on a scale of fucked to smouldering crater - it is going to end.

One final predictation, which I am DAMN certain of: Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are all going to be grim for political watching if you are into democratic values and principles. It will be a 4 day sales pitch for Brand Trump in all its All American Overblown Horror that Brits tend to find utterly distasteful. Expect the red carpet of full of turd glitter to be rolled out for Donald Trump Show. Expect May to embarass herself in her fawning all over him, as if she's star struck. Expect that hideously cringeworthy photo thats totally inevitable.

Politics is going to get worse. It may never get better.

(But yay football gets to cover it all up... Come on England!)

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lonelyplanetmum · 12/07/2018 14:48

Happened to notice the workers' rights bit.

"Given its strong record, and in the context of the UK’s vision for the future relationship with the EU, the UK proposes that the UK and the EU commit to the non-regression of labour standards."

So that means not reneging on anything that's been agreed before? Like minimum paid holiday? But not signing up to anything new?

Its laughable to say the UK is ensuring employment practices keep pace with rapid technological change in its response to the Taylor Review. That review made over 50 clear recommendations and all the govt has done is launch yet four more consultations, most of which repeat previous consultations anyway.

It seems to me a lot of the white paper says you can "trust us to do the right thing" . Yet we have proven that we can't be trusted.

We can't be trusted on the backstop.On workers' rights alone we have done the following:

  1. Imposed unlawful tribunal fees which decimated claims.
2.Tried the white van man tax. 3.Increased the threshold for trade union strike action. 4.Brought in loads of red tape whereby let workers could swap their employment rights in return for shares in their company which had to be scrapped.

So nope we can't be trusted.

DGRossetti · 12/07/2018 14:49

It IS A problem, DGR.

I didn't say it wasn't ...

Keep ignoring Scotland, and we/they won't be happy. It is not on.

Well that's what the average Brexiteer needs to understand. Bearing in mind the average Brexiteer needs "L" and "R" on their hands to know which knuckles to drag, are convinced that if there were to be another war HMS Victory would be sent into battle, and there's a secret squadron of Spitfires stationed under Glastonbury Tor ready to defend England in it's hour of need.

You only have to read the drivel they post on here - let alone in less polite company ... even on a thread pointing out the status of Ireland you can see the levels of ignorance (rising to zero) you have to deal with.

Whilst it's hard to fight against cock-up over conspiracy, I'm struggling to believe that the amount of chaos we're in is not by design.

DGRossetti · 12/07/2018 14:50

Why does the sun never set on the British Empire ?

Because God wouldn't trust an Englishman in the dark.

Napoleon had us nailed.

Motheroffourdragons · 12/07/2018 14:53

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ on behalf of the poster.

Motheroffourdragons · 12/07/2018 15:01

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This has been withdrawn by MNHQ on behalf of the poster.

Danniz · 12/07/2018 15:22

The Tory government also introduced having to be employed for 2 years before bringing an unfair dismissal claim (instead of 1), and massively cut the amount of compensation you can receive if you win an unfair dismissal claim.

BrexitWife · 12/07/2018 15:35

this paragraph suggesting the UK would sign up to the backstop with the intention of never using it.
Can someone correct me there but I thought that what was agreed in December (both the backstop option and the eu citizens right) were legally binding and the U.K. can’t actually go back on them??

topcat1980 · 12/07/2018 15:37

They also cut legal aid for unfair dismissal, meaning that most people won't actually take a case.

RedToothBrush · 12/07/2018 15:39

Nick Boles MP @NickBoles
If EU member states genuinely want a deal (and the €39 billion settlement) they must not let the Commission treat today's White Paper as an opening bid and respond with demands for more concessions. This is as far as we can go.

Incoherent gibbish is as far as the UK can go. Apparently.

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topcat1980 · 12/07/2018 15:41

This thing with the settlement, people really don't get it do they.

A huge portion of this is pension liabilities, if the UK doesn't pay it, then the EU could have the right not to pay anyone their pension ( inc Farage) they would also be able keep asetts that the UK has paid for like the EU bank, projects here wouldn't get funded etc etc.

It really isn't like we are paying them this and none of it comes back.

Motheroffourdragons · 12/07/2018 15:42

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BigChocFrenzy · 12/07/2018 15:43

MP Boles spouting balls as usual

  • the Single Market is a hell of a lot more valuable to the EU than £39 billion
  • and also continuing the Tory attempts to appeal to the EU member states, over the heads of the Commission negotiating team
BigChocFrenzy · 12/07/2018 15:47

Brexitwife The agreement last December was a draft - which May reneged on anyway.

Nothing is legally binding until the Withdrawal Ageement has been defined in text and approved by the UK, the EU heads of govt and the European Parliament.

If the WA is a "mixed" agreement, including a definite trade framework, that would also need approval of the 40 or so national & regional parliaments.

Motheroffourdragons · 12/07/2018 15:54

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This has been withdrawn by MNHQ on behalf of the poster.

RedToothBrush · 12/07/2018 15:56

Missed this / misinterpreted this:

Ian Dunt @IanDunt
Chaotic scenes in Chamber as MPs protest about not being given a copy of the white paper. "I say to the sec of state that it would be very unseemly for his statement to be delivered while copies are distributed."

Bercow suspends the session. Scenes.

He'll restart once copies have been distributed.

What an incredibly fucking Horlicks these people are. Is there nothing they won't fuck up.

Standard procedure is for these things to be made available 45 mins before Commons statement btw.

Dunt went on to do his usual commentary of the session. He got this response:

Tristan Jakob-Hoff @classicgoldbug
Please summarise in 280 characters or less.

His reply?

Ian Dunt @IanDunt
We're all in a lot of trouble.

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DGRossetti · 12/07/2018 15:56

The Tory government also introduced having to be employed for 2 years before bringing an unfair dismissal claim (instead of 1), and massively cut the amount of compensation you can receive if you win an unfair dismissal claim.

... and the Tories (under Cameron) threw UK citizens under the bus (limiting housing benefit and introducing a 3 month (?) delay on claiming benefits in order to be able to stick it to EU citizens in the UK.

OK, so it only affected the more vulnerable members in society - nobody important - but it illustrates how far the Tories are willing to go to scrap your protections in their Holy Quest to purify England.

DGRossetti · 12/07/2018 15:57

Standard procedure is for these things to be made available 45 mins before Commons statement btw.

frankly 45 years wouldn't be long enough to make sense of that.

RedToothBrush · 12/07/2018 15:58

Jim Sciutto @jimsciutto
Breaking: North Korean delegation did not show up at planned meeting with U.S. at Demilitarized Zone Thursday to discuss repatriating remains of Americans killed in Korean War. There was no call or explanation, @eliselabottcnn reports.

'We're all in a lot of trouble' could be the response to everything in politics right now.

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lonelyplanetmum · 12/07/2018 16:45

They also cut legal aid for unfair dismissal, meaning that most people won't actually take a case

Just thought I'd clarify that's almost right. Even though the Tories did decimate Legal Aid it was never originally available for employment claims brought in the tribunal. This was based on the false premise that tribunals could handled without formal representation.

lonelyplanetmum · 12/07/2018 16:54

It's no good reading reports of this. One has to watch it.

He didn't just mishear - he genuinely didn't understand the expression Hard Brexit.

bbc.in/2upSGTt

mathanxiety · 12/07/2018 16:55

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Economic_Affairs

The Institute of Economic Affairs.
An organisation called 'American Friends of the IEA' had received $215,000 as of 2010 from the US-based Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, donor-advised funds which support libertarian causes.[22]

Think tank Transparify, which is funded by the Open Society Foundations, ranked the IEA as one of the three least transparent think tanks in the UK in relation to funding.[23][24] The IEA responded by saying "...It is a matter for individual donors whether they wish their donation to be public or private – we leave that entirely to their discretion.", and that it has not "...earmarked money for commissioned research work from any company".[25]

Funding to the IEA from the alcohol industry, food industry, and sugar industry has also recently been documented.[26] IEA Research Fellow Christopher Snowdon disclosed alcohol industry funding in a response to a British Medical Journal article in 2014

Richard North is in every single neo-lib dogfight...

lonelyplanetmum · 12/07/2018 16:56

Sorry wrong link before ...

www.facebook.com/BBCPolitics/videos/2329172733766238/

mathanxiety · 12/07/2018 16:58

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donors_Capital_Fund
The DonorsCapital Fund, which provided almost a quarter of a million dollars in funding to the IEA. It appears to be a front for American big business.

According to The Guardian, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund distributed nearly US$120 million to more than 100 groups skeptical of global warming between 2002 and 2010.[8] According to a 2013 analysis by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund combined were the largest funders of what he calls "the climate change countermovement" in the US between 2003 and 2013.[5][9] Brulle estimated that by 2009, approximately one-quarter of the funding of the "climate countermovement" came from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.[6]

In 2008, Donors Capital Fund granted US$17.7 million to the Clarion Fund, now the Clarion Project, a nonprofit organization which educates the U.S. public about the dangers of Islamic extremism.[10][11]

Donors Capital Fund granted US$192,000 to the Alaska Policy Forum (APF) in the organization's first two years, 2009 and 2010. APF is free-market think tank and a member of the State Policy Network (SPN) of conservative and libertarian think tanks which focus on state-level policy. The grants from Donors Capital Fund were most of the funds raised by APF in that period.[12] In 2010, Donors Capital Fund granted US$1.75 million to SPN, US$2 million to Donors Trust, US$2.5 million to the American Enterprise Institute, US$2 million to Citizens Against Government Waste, US$1.7 million to The Heartland Institute, and over 206 other grantees

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute
A very prominent neo-con think tank.
Former AEI scholars or affiliates notably include President Gerald Ford, William J. Baroody Jr., William J. Baroody Sr., Robert Bork, Arthur F. Burns, Ronald Coase, Dinesh D'Souza, Alfred de Grazia, Christopher DeMuth, Martin Feldstein, Milton Friedman, David Frum, Reuel Marc Gerecht, David Gergen, Newt Gingrich, James K. Glassman, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Irving Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Seymour Martin Lipset, John Lott, James C. Miller III, Joshua Muravchik, Michael Novak, Richard Perle, Roscoe Pound, Laurence Silberman, Antonin Scalia, Ben Wattenberg, and James Q. Wilson...

...In 1990, AEI hired Charles Murray (and received his Bradley Foundation support for The Bell Curve) after the Manhattan Institute dropped him.[28] Others brought to AEI by DeMuth included John Bolton, Dinesh D'Souza, Richard Cheney, Lynne Cheney, Michael Barone, James K. Glassman, Newt Gingrich, John Lott, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali...

...Foreign and defense policy studies
AEI's foreign and defense policy studies researchers focus on "how political and economic freedom—as well as American interests—are best promoted around the world".[37] AEI staff have tended to be advocates of a hard U.S. line on threats or potential threats to the United States, including the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Russia, and terrorist or militant groups like al Qaeda and Hezbollah. Likewise, AEI staff have promoted closer U.S. ties with countries whose interests or values they view as aligned with America's, such as Israel, the Republic of China, India, Australia, Japan, Mexico, Colombia, the United Kingdom, and emerging post-Communist states such as Poland and Georgia.[citation needed]...
*Note - not the EU, not Germany, or France, though I suspect American right wing/neo-con influence has been at work in Sweden.

...AEI's foreign and defense policy studies department, directed by Danielle Pletka, is the part of the institute most commonly associated with neoconservatism,[13] especially by its critics.[67][68] Prominent foreign-policy neoconservatives at AEI include Richard Perle, Gary Schmitt, and Paul Wolfowitz. John Bolton*, often said to be a neoconservative,[69][70] has said he is not one, as his primary focus is on American interests, not democracy promotion.[71][72] Joshua Muravchik and Michael Ledeen spent many years at AEI, although they departed at around the same time as Reuel Marc Gerecht in 2008 in what was rumored to be a "purge" of neoconservatives at the institute, possibly "signal[ing] the end of [neoconservatism's] domination over the think tank over the past several decades",[73] although Muravchik later said it was the result of personality and management conflicts.

*At least John Bolton is brutally honest about what he is committed to.

There is a list of organisations represented on the board of the Donors Capital Fund. I am going through it, but having problems with slow or no access to Wikipedia right now.

Essentially this fund directs funding to support low reg/no reg advocates, American interests (security and business), climate change denial/free market solutions to climate change, free market solutions to healthcare, housing, workers' rights - all very 18th C stuff.

RedToothBrush · 12/07/2018 17:23

Alex Wickham @WikiGuido
New briefing note by Martin Howe QC being circulated among ERG MPs warns the government's white paper commits to binding ECJ jurisdiction:

order-order.com/2018/07/12/brexiters-warn-white-paper-includes-binding-ecj-jurisdiction/

Alex Wickham @WikiGuido
This crosses May’s red line on ECJ jurisdiction “as the PM well knows”, says former Dexeu chief of staff @BrexitStewart

May had so many red lines she's now tied herself up in knots with them.

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DGRossetti · 12/07/2018 17:38

Meanwhile ...

www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/12/ukgov_data_adequacy_eu/

.
.
.

Having been criticised for its previous lacklustre statements and slow prep on data flows post-Brexit, the government put a lot of emphasis on data exchange and data protection in the document.

It warns that disruption in cross-border data flows would be "economically costly" and risked creating "unnecessary barriers, such as the unjustified localisation of data" that could damage business. Similar statements are made for law and security databases.

The government also insists, as expected, that it sees the EU's usual adequacy agreement – which the bloc has with 12 countries, in addition to two partial agreements – as "the right starting point" but that it should "go beyond the framework".

This includes that the UK should be allowed to leave the EU while effectively staying in its members' clubs – a common theme throughout the document, which refers to the European Data Protection Board in the context of data flows.

This is in spite of missives from the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier, in which he has repeatedly said the EU "cannot, and will not" share its decision-making powers with a third country.

In a possible bid to win over such opinions, the government said that wherever the UK participates in an EU agency, it will respect the remit of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

(contd).

What part of "no" don't you understand ?