Westministenders: Conference Season

[RedToothBrush]

Party Conference Season has officially started. What happens could be utterly crucial for Brexit since Brexit isn't about the EU its about internal party divisions and the politics of personality.

Starting off in the Yellow Corner
The Lib Dems proposals for associate membership and a leader outside the HoC. We know that they support exit from Brexit but what is striking is the shake up of the party seems to be the only thing drawing attention and there is a distinct lack of talk of anything else - including Brexit. Yet there are hints of a tiny shift back to the LDs as Labour and the Conservatives implode despite the LDs having lost all direction. If they can find one then maybe they can throw spanners into the works further down the line.

Moving over to the Red Corner in Liverpool
The Labour Party strife and squabbling gets to be airred in full view in Liverpool; the ongoing anti-semitism row which seems to have no end in sight, the rising issues over women's rights, various Labour MPs being no confidenced in an attempt to deselect them and Brexit policy or more correctly lack of Brexit policy. Thornberry has stated that Labour will vote against any deal May puts forward seemingly in order to trigger another GE. This has been denied as being official policy, but she's a front bencher who hasn't been slapped down for disobedience by Corbyn. There are lots of rumours flying around about the party leadership being under pressure to change direction on Brexit so her comments might be push back against that. Word is that various trade unions and perhaps even Momentum are looking to push for another referendum and a much more pro-remain or explicit EEA policy.

And then there's the Blues...
Where to start with them??

Talk has changed from not whether there will be a leadership challenge to open and widespread discussion from moderate party loyals about when there will be one.

Its been said that a challenge isn't expected at conference nor straight after; the feeling is May will be left to sort out the withdrawal backstop agreement in October at least before being rudely dumped. But don't count on it. Especially in the party of backstabbers.

There's been lots of movement around Johnson too. Former close advisors say he's on self destruct but will still probably be PM. There's the break up of his marriage. There's the complete failure of his time in the foreign office where its hard to see what he actually did apart from upset people. There's his outrageous comments which seem in the style of Steve Bannon. There's talk of him suddenly apparently showing Brexit regret. For me there is one question, which seems very similar to Brexit itself: Boris Johnson has spent so much time and effort into the game of becoming PM, what thought has he given to what he actually does when he has achieved it? Its almost as if there is no plan for that...

Then theres the ERG, with their alternative Brexit White Paper which includes the magic Irish 'Not a Border but Looks Just Like a Border' Solution. Its supported by just about every Tory MP you'd put in a horror cabinet of heartless cold out of touch bastards, who would drive 20 miles out of their way rather than pass through a council estate. But even their stance seems to be softening; talk of aligning NI closely with EU - particularly with agrifoods seems to be moving away from a position compatible with a US trade deal.

And finally the original Tory Rebels, who like everyone else are firmly sticking their fingers up at May's Chequers Deal. Several have said they would support a People's Vote if May doesn't get her head out of her arse and admit the idea is a dead duck.

Look out for more 'non-Tory' style policy plans coming out over the next couple of weeks, like the talk of renationalising the railways.

So what does this mean for Brexit?
Well nothing and everything.

None of this changes the EU position. None of this changes the realities of the negogition process and the 29th March deadline.

It just is in some ways the final party show downs before decisions start HAVING to be made. Party fractures are going to be tested to their limits and the chances of it getting nasty, with the stakes being so high, are high.

I wouldn't like to call ANYTHING unless the conclusion of the conferences.

Its something we don't need as a country. Waiting for this lot to get their shit together has doomed the country.

The Recession is coming. It can not be stopped now. Regardless of what happens over Brexit. Its too late. We can only mitigate the scale of it.

This is the part just before the 2008 crash when people were saying what was about to happen, but everyone ignored. The accepted narrative now is that 'no one could have predicted the crash'. Except they could and they did. Its just that no one wanted to listen.

This is the part just before Iraq where thousands protested and were not listened to, because a politician had it in his head that it was the best option, but he had no real plan for what happened next.

This is the part when people said PFI was a spectactularly bad idea. But it kept being used over and over and over again by all political parties because it was politically easier in the short term.

Enjoy this Christmas.

Next year is going to be a rough old ride for a lot of people.

I think I can see some raspberries on those petits fours...

school targets come before vulnerable children (furrin ones, at least)

TBF that doesn't surprise me one bit. They come before vulnerable non furrin ones too. Its not that uncommon that booster sessions are offered to children who are performing well, but nothing offered to those who are struggling. That's even at KS1 Sats level. At 6 you can get written off in education now if you don't perform well with no help and little chance of ever becoming under performing.

school targets come before vulnerable children
There's a generation of vulnerable children with SEN and mental illness who are being pushed out of schools so that exam results targets are achieved < also there is no other qualification on offer for 16 year olds, so they are all having to sit the same gove GCSE s, that 20% will automatically fail>

@DGRossetti

Notice how the OP headed people off that the pass to keep this in AIBU

How many drips in a flood ?

I'm the OP of that thread - I don't understand your comment.

Theresa May is quite extraordinary in that she makes the wrong judgement EVERY TIME. It’s quite a skill.

That's even at KS1 Sats level. At 6 you can get written off in education now if you don't perform well with no help and little chance of ever becoming under performing.

It was almost always thus - back in the 1950s both my schools and DH's (in different parts of the UK so probably typical) were rigidly streamed from the beginning of Juniors. If you weren't in the A stream your chance of passing the 11+ could be put at zero. So written off at 7. I think the sixties and seventies did try to remedy that, but once Thatcher got in we have gradually been getting more and more selfish, with this '"I'm all right Jack attitude" and who cares about anyone else being honed to perfection under the Tories since 2010. The saddest thing is that elitist like Gove, Rees-Mogg, Johnson, Farage have sold a vision to average Leavers who haven't woken up to the fact that they are being conned by spivs and snake-oil salesmen.

Mrs May, Salzburg. The EU is a tennis club and she turns up with football boots and gets 'arsey' because she failed to read the letter from school telling her it is a tennis club.

Schools. The 'Gifted and Able' in schools scheme is incredibly divisive.
Typically the older (more developed in the first years at primary) who are 'pushed' by parents get praised for their 'abilities' often to the detriment of others who may be almost a year younger (significant in first years of primary) and who may have parents that are not as 'invested' in their school achievements. Add this to the 'teachers pet' syndrome and many get a poor quality of education.
The fact that IIRC there is a financial incentive to the school to do this simply makes it worse. in some instances those 'gifted' get days out that the rest of the class do not share in. Truly disgusting.

{snake-oil salesmen}
Is that a euphemism?

peregrina John Gace give a mostly serious summary of Salzburg and May's Meltdown

www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/20/theresa-may-in-denial-after-her-salzburg-ordeal

Off-topic, but....
If schools are doing this, it is because of the government's target-driven culture; and the pressure to succeed as failure means punishing consequences.
The percentage-pass targets a school is set are often raised every year, and become increasingly unachievable whilst simultaneously considering the little humans who are the recipients of all this.
This is what education has become.

If schools are doing this,
They are, Hester the 'rise' in 'home education' is often those too vulnerable to survive and 'pass' the new GCSEs in main stream schools. Heads are stuck between a rock and a hard place on this:
www.tes.com/news/educating-manchester-head-quits-over-rolling-probe

It breaks my heart woman. Another of the many reasons to send this government packing.
As for what they're doing to the NHS, I can't even begin...

Let's hope Brexit will be their undoing.

It would appear that the EU, its diplomats and officials are finally losing patience with the UK. That would explain the Tusk tweet (whether he or one of his Social Media team put it up).

They have been remarkably patient up to now, repeating ad nauseum that " these are the rules", "here is the framework", "these are the backstops that need to be sorted", "here are the red lines". And the UK keeps on thinking that they are movable feasts and shouldn't apply to them. May must really have pissed them off at that dinner and the subsequent 1:1 meetings.

Interestingly, one of the people on the Sky News Press Review last night was a self avowed Arch Brexiteer (heads up the "Institute of Ideas"?) and even she was deriding the Government strategy which pretends that "nothing will change" and the future relationship can be "frictionless" (As far as I could make out, her "brexitness" based on "the country needs a good shake up" )

Robert Peston on Facebook:

Chequers, as the journalist Chris Deerin has pointed out, goes pop.
Which wry and funny as it is for those of us of a certain age will not be cheering up Theresa May.
Because the EU summit in Salzburg has been a personal catastrophe for her.
And worse than that, it was an avoidable catastrophe.
Because every EU expert bar those she employs in Whitehall has been saying very loudly for weeks that the trade and commercial proposal in her Chequers Brexit plan would never win favour among the EU 27.
So the question is why she waited to have that so publicly and humiliatingly stated by the EU's president Donald Tusk today, rather than quietly acquiring some wriggle room over recent days.
Also, she's rejected the EU's proposal to keep the Northern Ireland border with the Republic open - because in her estimation it would undermine the integrity of the UK - but won't tell them what her revised proposal may be, though she insists she has one.
Neither she nor EU leaders want a "hard" no-deal Brexit.
But probably the only way for her to avoid it is to eat the humblest of humble pies and jog back to the deal her departed Brexit secretary, David Davis, naively thought he had been mandated to negotiate - a more conventional free trade agreement based on Canada's deal with the UK.
And maybe she could get that through the House of Commons, if her Remainer MPs were terrified into believing that the alternative to backing it would be a general election - which they assume Corbyn would win (whatever opinion polls may indicate).
That said, Canada still wouldn't solve the Irish border conundrum.
Which means that the UK may not be in a position to sign a withdrawal agreement - and that in turn means a no-deal Brexit remains a live possibility, even a probability.

A couple of things follow from all of this:
1) May will emerge as unique in the annals of history if she survives as PM much longer in the face of setbacks on this scale;
2) if all conventional roads lead to a hard no-deal Brexit, the notion of Parliament exerting control and forcing another referendum on us would begin to look not wholly fanciful.

PS at 4.45pm
Brussels officials say that Barnier, Juncker and Tusk wanted to help May turn Salzburg into a stepping stone towards a deal, rather than an impasse.
"We were so ready to help" says one.
But she and her officials made two serious miscalculations, they say:
1) they say she was too aggressive, both in her article setting out what she wants in the German newspaper Die Welt, and at last night's dinner;
2) she was naive in thinking she could appeal above the heads of Barnier, Juncker and Tusk to EU leaders, when those leaders have more pressing issues on their plates and delegated the substance of talks to Barnier for a good reason.

Which means May has driven Brexit talks into a dark cul de sac, and goodness alone knows how she'll get her and the UK out of it.

Just read John Crace, thanks.
May never learns, does she? She ought to have learnt something from her disastrous election campaign but hasn't done.

How can May possibly be “stunned” by this? The EU said from the start that her plan was unacceptable.
Even I knew they didn’t agree to it because they told her so months ago!

Does anyone else keep mentally hearing "Nothing has changed" when reading the reports from Salzburg with that note of rising hysteria May used when saying "NOTHING has changed, nothing has changed" about the dementia tax in that disastrous interview before the last GE?

It breaks my heart woman
For some it works well Hester ; they get a funky creative home education programme, can still sit the GCSEs they want to and can do, and have none of the mental distress of mainstream schools. Some university places are rather 'negotiable' now with the need for 'customers'.

There's a whole new 'off grid' educational sub culture, developing.

"NOTHING has changed, nothing has changed"

Yes May is still as arrogant as ever.

Yes, Nothing has changed, Nothing has changed.

@HurricaneFloss

@DGRossetti Notice how the OP headed people off that the pass to keep this in AIBU How many drips in a flood ?

I'm the OP of that thread - I don't understand your comment.

Until quite recently, it seemed MNHQ had an agenda that no Brexit talk was allowed outside this Forum. This wasn't stated explicitly, but by noticing that the moment a thread in AIBU/Chat mentioned Brexit, "someone" reported it, and it got moved here. Obviously because that way no one who wasn't already onside in the debate would see it.

Then a few weeks ago, a couple of people - not "the usual suspects" but genuine posters - started asking Brexity questions. MNHQ followed SOP, and magicked the threads to here, but the OP and others complained so MNHQ decided they should stay in AIBU/Chat. After all, as many people pointed out, MNHQ are very lax about other subjects that go in those forums.

You were obviously aware of this as you posted - you asked for the thread to stay in AIBU. And now the naked fury of the Braindead Brexiteers is revealed in it's glory. Look at how many whinging posts you got with the sentiment that the thread should be hidden.

But MNHQ are standing firm (thumbs up).

And so, slowly, we are seeing debates about Brexit starting to touch those people that haven't really followed it. And - as you might expect, given your OP - a lot of people are starting to realise they've been sold a pup.

The thread you started is priceless, as the longer it gets, the less we find out about what Brexiteers think. It's simply a mixtape of "we won, get over it", "Immigration", "sovereignty" and soundbites. It's a beautifu tapestry of peoples genuine concerns being pissed all over by people whose ignorance is a thing of wonder.

Not sure if using more words to explain fewer helps . Either way, it's a damn good thread, and it's rattled the barking Brexiteers something chronic.

@DGRossetti - thanks, understood now!

There's an AIBU on Macron now and how despicable he is

How can May possibly be “stunned” by this? The EU said from the start that her plan was unacceptable.
Even I knew they didn’t agree to it because they told her so months ago!

Exactly this. I just don't get it. Is she arrogant enough to think the EU27 will change their minds if she digs her heels in enough? Or is she just thick enough and unimaginative enough that she can't think of a different tack to take?

Exactly this. I just don't get it. Is she arrogant enough to think the EU27 will change their minds if she digs her heels in enough? Or is she just thick enough and unimaginative enough that she can't think of a different tack to take?

You probably wouldn't be asking that question if you realised how thick the hard core of Brexiteers are.

Although, there's something ever so slightly uplifting about hitting such a compacted vein of complete fuckwittery. It actually feels like progress. A lot of the lighter material - the more thoughtful and considered Leavers - has been cleared aside, and it's just a bedrock of moronity remaining. Which should be good news. After all, you can build on bedrock.