Westministenders: Talks Walk Out?

[RedToothBrush]

We are now on the countdown to whether we get a backstop Withdrawal Deal. May is hoping to get the EU to backdown on this saying that we will stay in the customs union until a deal is agreed on NI. That would mean come 29th March, we'd have no transistion period, but we'd still have a hard border in NI because we were out of the single market. And if the EU don't agree to it we are into the chances of accidental Brexit being sky high. The only way out would be revoking a50. May has hinted that if Tory MPs don't give her support we could end up with no brexit at all - whether she means revoking a50 or Beano isn't clear.

So onward to 18th October...

Interesting, and potentially cheering, viewpoint from David Allen Green:

There is no obvious way to rid the UK of the referendum mandate, other than allowing it to be discharged.

Even a further referendum (the result of which nobody can be certain) would not be enough, especially if there is a lower turnout. And there is probably not enough time now for the primary legislation required for a new referendum before March.

On 29th March 2019 the mandate will be discharged. The result of the 2016 referendum will be honoured. The UK will be out of the EU. And then what?

In terms of substance, rather than form, any future arrangement can keep the UK in the EU’s customs area, and can allow the UK to (in effect) be part of the single market. And as the mandate will have been discharged the referendum result will not (or should not) have any further purchase.

On this basis, it would seem sensible to encourage the UK to enter the withdrawal agreement on offer – the so called “transition period” is in reality a continuity provision.

And after 29th March 2019, the aim would be to convert the transition period into a permanent association agreement.

I sometimes call this a “Burma Brexit” after the British Army’s dignified retreat in World War II which was skilfully converted into a impressive victory.

Many Leave politicians will not be able to counter this, as it requires a grasp of detail which few have shown, and in any case their mandate will have been discharged.

So rather than hoping for (and revelling in) disasters and setbacks, a wiser approach of those who value the UK’s ongoing relationship with the EU is to support the government’s attempts to get a withdrawal agreement in place.

This may be the best we can hope for. But in my view, dissent/protest from Remainers is still very valuable. It shows the Government the level of public discontent and hopefully reduces the likelihood of a hard Brexit.

jackofkent.com/2018/10/why-remainers-should-allow-the-brexit-mandate-to-be-discharged/

What are we to make of our Arlene's dash to Brussels ?

(1) Michelle O'Neill (Sinn Fein) and reps of three other NI parties went there last week and bent Barnier's ear.

(2) The wind blowing from Westminster has put the fear of God crossways in the DUP - my guess is there are rumblings of ditching the DUP and ploughing ahead with the CU/backstop.

(3) Fear of abandonment by Westminster runs very deep in the DUP psyche, and the red lines/blood remarks were meant as much for Westminster consumption as anyone else's. So were the paramilitary drills carried out around the Twelfth of July this year.
.....
www.irishnews.com/news/brexit/2018/10/06/news/nationalists-say-stormont-should-not-have-a-role-in-shaping-brexit-backstop-after-michel-barnier-meeting-1451678/
Possible plan by TM to lob the border issue to Stormont, effectively giving the DUP the power to destroy the GFA and veto any deal. I can see how TM would be attracted to this approach. The DUP could be blamed for the disaster of Brexit and at the same time they would get what they want out of it. Plus I suspect she is completely spineless.

From the article:
Sammy Wilson, one of the DUP's 10 MPs at Westminster, said on Twitter: "If she is rolling back on her pledge that there will be no barriers between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, then the prime minister should be under no illusions; we will vote against her deal and it will go nowhere."

The Irish News is generally a broadly nationalist NI newspaper.

As an additional note, the Irish politics aspect of all of this should be remembered.

Fine Gael was the party that arose in the 1930s from pro-Anglo-Irish Treaty forces and supporters, among them the Army Comrades Association (former Treatyite servicemen in the Free State/Pro Treaty Army) turned fascists, aka the Blueshirts, and the old political party Cumann na nGaedheal. It also gathered under its wing parties representing large farmers. Its Achilles heel for the period of the Troubles was this legacy - authoritarian, pro-Treaty, fuck the poor, tip the cap to the RC church.

Then during the 80s under Garret Fitzgerald and afterwards, especially during the post Troubles period of peace, a massive shift in preoccupation from 'the national question' (i.e. partition) to questions of personal/sexual agency and freedom dominated Irish politics, to be joined in due course by the fallout of austerity policies.

Fine Gael supported the introduction of divorce, same sex marriage and the repeal of the 8th Amendment, and Enda Kenny in particular made some very hard hitting speeches on the topic of clerical abuse of women and children in past decades in Ireland. After the financial crash Fine Gael was able to position itself as the party of fiscal reform, the anti-corruption, fiscal responsibility, socially progressive party.

Unfortunately, austerity in the post crash and Bailout period has hit quite hard in Ireland, and along with strains in healthcare, housing and welfare, and the rise of organised crime/drugs has come the rise of Sinn Fein, branching into Ireland from the 80s on (from the time of the Armalite and the ballot box) and offering a left of centre, progressive alternative that at the moment (in the context of Brexit, and with the DUP being true to form and clearly threatening the prospect of reunification by trashing the GFA) also has the cachet of its NI roots and claim to represent NI nationalist opinion. Sinn Fein has the capacity to wipe out the Irish Labour Party (more smoked salmon pink than red) on the left and also to outflank Fianna Fail on the nationalist and austerity questions. (FF being the offspring of deValera's minority Anti-Treaty forces that became a political behemoth).

Both FF and Sinn Fein have the potential to trample Fine Gael underfoot on the matter of NI if the rug gets pulled out from under Ireland's feet wrt the border and the GFA. (SF moreso than FF, because of FF being tarnished by the financial crash and because Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen destroyed the local constituency party club organisation that was FF's strength because through those clubs ['Cumainn'] it stayed sensitive to grassroots opinion and the local clubs got the vote out.)

Bottom line - Fine Gael will be working really, really hard in Brussels to prevent a EU about-turn on the question of the Border.

Thanks math for that succinct summary. I always feel I should know more about Irish politics and that has helped a great deal.

Yes, thank you @mathanxiety .

Very useful background, math

UK army investigates after Tommy Robinson poses with soldiers

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/09/uk-army-investigates-tommy-robinson-poses-with-soldiers

Promising indications that the govt is on the verge of agreeing to an NI backstop & deal
- Raab aswering questions in the HoC

(now we need May to acquire a backbone, not just knowledge)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-09/eu-envoys-said-to-plan-pre-summit-meeting-oct-12-brexit-update

A lawmaker [MP] from the Democratic Unionist Party tried to put Raab on the spot
by asking him how would the U.K. ensure that the “foolishly agreed” backstop won’t last forever.

Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister who resigned with David Davis,
stood up and asked Raab to recognize that there were solutions to the Irish border problem that did not involve a backstop.

Raab’s response was that what Baker proposes - known as the Canada plus - has been flat-out rejected by the EU.

What Baker is proposing is a shortcut to a no deal, said Raab.
< strongly suggesting Raab is against no deal and prepared to agree backstop. Depends on May, though >

Why is May so set against a Customs Union? You would think that would be the one bit she would want to keep, it being nearest to the old EEC. It doesn't fully solve the NI border problem, or should we call it the UK border problem, but would be a start.

www.ft.com/content/e47d1828-7a0d-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c475

Sorry don't bother with the above link it doesn't flipping work !

What bothers me about the push for CU:
For frictionless trade, we need to belong to the Single Market, with a customs arrangement bolted on.

The CU alone does NOT help JIT etc:
Turkey belongs to the CU and goods trucks from there typically wait 15-30 hours at the EU border: massive queues

Turkey also has to accept - without a vote - whatever the EU decide on tariffs with non-EU countries .. and iirc, those countries don't have to reciprocate

The CU may solve the NI border, but does not help rUK so much
Turkey found it also makes it difficult - although not impossible - to have trade deals with non-EU countries

So the Ultras will claim that the lack of Brexit benefits is because it wasn't a proper Brexit
So we'll go through all this pain, but the boil on our arse will not be lanced

Stating the obvious here, but to sum up what we're saying here: there can't be a soft or moderate Brexit other than Norway+ (which is remain without any political clout, especially that now the UK is the official troublemaker in the eyes of the EU!)
Brilliant move and great use of public spending to get there.

Why should the UK be upset at having no political clout? They never bothered to engage anyway. It means that the EU get rid of the UKIP MEPs. This all sounds like a win win to me. .

Indeed.

What makes me angry is the waste of money this represents at a time resources are scarce:

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/10/uk-public-finances-among-weakest-in-world-imf-says

If the day after the vote video footage of a large group of 'foreigners' had been shown to be leaving on a ferry the government could have claimed Brexit was done without doing anything else.
The general public would have been none the wiser.
The ferry with the 'foreigners' could actually bring them back again after the cameras had gone home.

This is the world we live in. I am so ashamed. It is working as well. My university-educated best friend regularly rants about lazy homeless people.

Hungary's homeless fear they are Viktor Orbán's next target
www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/10/hungary-homeless-fear-they-are-viktor-orban-next-target?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

The ERG boil can never be lanced without killing the entire patient. May has to accept this and plough on regardless.

How come Arlene Foster has so much power over brexit? As far as I can see there's 18 elected representatives for NI and she's not one of them. I know she's leader of the a party but that doesn't change the fact that she's unelected. Am I missing something?

Her 18 DuP MP's give the Tories a Parliamentary majority, they arranged a deal on this after the 2017 GE..

@MyCatIsBonkers - she has "power" on this for two reasons.
1- the DUP has a "confidence and supply" arrangement with the Tories. If the Tories didn't have this they wouldn't be able to survive as a government because they don't have a parliamentary majority in their own the confidence means - support the Tories if there is a "vote of no confidence ". That is just short of being in a formal coalition. Similarly the "supply " bits means supplying the votes for any legislation that the Tories put to Parliament.
2- sadly the DUP represent the Unionist voice in NI. They are the Unionist equivalent of Sinn Fein and overtook the Official Unionists as the Unionist voice. The OU are a bit less extreme.
Anything which screws up the Good Friday Agreement affects both Nationalists and Unionists in NI. Both voices must be heard and respected. It's a shame that it's Sinn Féin and the DUP that are the loudest talkers.

@Bell, thats a far more eloquent explanation!

As no one voted for this shoddy arrangement, its rather surprising Leavers bang on about the EU but don't mind being dictated too by a bunch of extremists, linked to terrorism, corruption & with a complete disregard for women's rights, it's shameful.

George Monbiot has a piece in today's Guardian talking about one benefit of being out of the EU being able to not abide by the CAP.
Now, I don't know a lot about agriculture, but it struck me that this was an area where reform should be attempted, rather than walking off in a huff. He then went on to detail the proposals being made by Westminster, which he found unsatisfactory. So back again to dud decisions made closer to home.

I wasn't convinced by his article, but having just found it on line, will have a look to see what the comments state. The only trouble is, the Brexit trolls usually invade, with their "we're leaving" mantra.

@jasjas1973 [sheepish wave] Hi, the DUP are like the Tea Party movement in the USA. The ones we can't fathom. Creationist loons . Anti women's rights, as you say. Ghastly bunch.
I despise Sinn Fein but at least they pretend to be measured and sensible these days on stuff like that.