Westministenders: Game Over?

[RedToothBrush]

May has a draft deal which she has presented to the Cabinet. Woohooo!

The catch is, it doesn't mention the Irish Border. Just a minor point. This is because she has no way forward on it. There are so many red lines from so many different groups shes tangled up in knots with them.

She wrote a letter to the DUP to tell them to suck it up. Arlene has told her to stick it. And if she hadn't told her to stick it, Scottish Tories would have told her to stick it. David Davis has told her to stick it. Rees-Moog has told her to stick it. And this afternoon, one of the Ministers for Queues at Dover, Jo Johnson, told her to stick it and that we need a people's vote. On top of that, her plans to try and get cross party support and get the Labour Party to support it, have suffered a blow as Momentum voted to tell May to stick it.

In fact it might be harder to think of people who WILL support it.

Not that this is a surprise. We've all be aware of this for some time. Is it finally game over?

The government have at least seemingly realised that this month is the last opportunity they have for a deal. Dominic has also realised that Dover is quite close to France and this is quite a big deal.

The EU pushed back their meeting until the 27th. This coincidentally is the same day there is a decision over a50 at the ECJ and the right to revoke.

If May can't get her act together over the Irish Border, this might yet prove to be the last option open to her, to prevent Brexmaggeddon.

Jo Johnson is not too far from the mark with vassalage or chaos? Take your pick Mrs May.

ATAD comes into effect on 1st April 2019

I had to look this up. ATAD is anti-tax avoidance directive.

This actually comes into effect on 1st January 2019 but January 1 2020 for the "exit tax", which I assume is the biggie and the reason why JRM, the ERG and the Mays to want us safely out by April 2019.

I find it amazing (or not really considering our press) that this is not really mentioned. That the whole referendum was timed and campaigned for by people who will benefit from the UK being out of the EU when the ATAD. I would love to know TM's true conflict of interest. But it is very quiet.

Reference (if you wade through it): uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/w-004-6057?transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)&firstPage=true&comp=pluk&bhcp=1

Was there some sort of war event at the Royal Albert Hall? Jezza didn't go? Michael Foot moment?

💐

I find it amazing (or not really considering our press) that this is not really mentioned. That the whole referendum was timed and campaigned for by people who will benefit from the UK being out of the EU when the ATAD. I would love to know TM's true conflict of interest. But it is very quiet.

Its come up during the course of conversations on these threads. But yes, it's a hugely important point that's been vastly ignored when I do believe it to be central to what's going on.

Havana there are a few places online where you can buy contact lenses. (This may be common knowledge but I was really surprised, given how hard it always seems to get them from an optician!) I’ve just bought a few extra boxes. I know they aren’t essentials, but important to me for morale.

Re: the ATAD: Its come up during the course of conversations on these threads. But yes, it's a hugely important point that's been vastly ignored when I do believe it to be central to what's going on.

I have read about it on these threads, but it is not discussed in general conversation about Brexit at all.

Or is it like recycling being shipped to China? Something I never knew until recently and everyone I have spoken to says "yes I knew that". And just kind of accepts it as being normal. Except in this case it would be "yes I knew that most of the people who are campaigning for a brexit are doing it to avoid paying huge sums of money in tax, including the PM's husband's clients, and that's fine with me".

I personally am horrified by the blatant timing and consider it to corruption plain and simple. In my real-life circle, everyone just accepts it as the way of the world while I start looking for my pitchfork after a couple of drinks.

I am googling and found this: www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/is-the-anti-tax-avoidance-directive-the-reason-the-rich-want-out-of-eu-1-5669763

I can't find it , but I read somewhere that the necessity to leave in March is to avoid pension equalisation legislation too?. We have some of the worst pensions in the EU, and we women probably have some of the very worst.

RNorth says UK food exports to the EU would stop dead for at least 6 months,
as it takes that long for a 3rd country to apply and be put on all the EU databases

After this there would be delays due to Customs, phytosanitary checks etc;
So no more frictionless exports, at least until their is a trade deal

Some UK farmers & food supplies will go out of business.

The EU is self-sufficient in food; they would just need to change their internal distribution
The UK would have to let through EU food without checks and order an emergency WTO waiver to still carry out checks on imports from elsewhere

@jasjas1973 - If there is civil disobedience, it will be because of food and med shortages

My point about the possibility of a State of Emergency is that in the event of a No Deal Brexit, the government will be compelled to act to prevent civil disobedience.

If there is the possibility of shortages of food, medicines, fuel etc. then the government will be forced to make contingency plans to ensure that everyone gets fair access to these. This would be required to prevent looting, violence and the emergence of a black market, as well as to ensure that factories and services have access to the materials, fuel and labour that they need. It would require solutions that can operate for a number of months. The idea that a six-week food and medicine stockpile will see the UK through the initial disruption is laughable - unless normal service is resumed almost immediately, the stockpile just moves the day the country runs out by six weeks from the end of March to mid-May. Remember that after WW2, food rationing lasted for another 9 years, until 1954, such was the disruption caused by the conflict.

If there is the outlook of rationing and civil unrest, how long will EU citizens choose to stay in the UK - particularly with ministers already attempting to put the blame for Brexit on the EU? What will happen in care homes, food processing factories, transport, hospitality etc. - vital industries that are largely staffed by EU immigrants and which are the sort of industries that seem unimportant until they are suddenly not functioning?

We have to leave in time to avoid the election organisation for the EP

• both the UK and the EU wanted to avoid further UK involvement in this.

iirc, The UK has already passed the bill to implement ATAD on schedule in 2019
So that will happen even after Brexit

State pensions in other EU countries are higher mostly because people pay in much more.
My contribution in Germany is much higher than my NI and is also income related, like the pension.
As with UK public services: people aren't prepared to pay enough for the standard they want

imo, the fierce opposition by Ultras to extending A50 beyond 30 March is because they want Brexit asap, before it can be stopped.

Also, some Leavers on RNorth's blog - more informed about a No Deal disaster - want an extension, because they fear that Brexit may be so bad that the UK public will ask to rejoin within a few years

Havana In the case of No Deal, all those things the govt hasn't planned - like E27 citizens fleeing the mess -
may accumulate and cause the situation to spiral out of control:

shortages, layoffs, civil unrest, businesses going under / leaving, recession, capital flight, business flight, Sterling crisis ....

A significant number of people live from paycheck to paycheck without savings:
they won't cope well if prices of essentials rise and / or they lose hours or jobs

The benefits system can't cope now and would likely be slow in providing help, even if the govt uses emergency powers to cut waiting periods & checks

You've both described very well why we wont be going down the No-deal path.
No party/government would survive this and the Tories would go the same way as Labour after the Winter of Discontent.

Also, have we even got the numbers to control a rioting population? the Army is under 100k and the Police can't even deal with the crime we ve got now.

A no-deal Brexit will most definitely require emergency procedures and there will be civil unrest imho.

I am literally praying for a #peoplesvote.

In terms of the NHS I really believe Brexit would be the end. I turned up to an A and E in an ambulance on Monday. We couldn't get in as the corridor was full of trolleys. There wasn't a single spare trolley in the hospital for me to transfer to. So for 15 minutes I lay on the ambulance trolley, until I was asked to wait in chairs in the waiting room. Which I did. I was seriously scared. The NHS staff were as always amazing but looked totally exhausted and demoralised. It seems so many people have No Idea what is at stake.

You've both described very well why we wont be going down the No-deal path
It's not a 'path', it's just the inevitable default position.

It is also why we haven't been told about the number of deaths and loss of civil rights it is about to cause.

They know.

I just do not believe that any Government would turn us into some sort of Yugoslavian nightmare state, which i agree is what a no-deal could do.

So, it will be a GE or another vote.

Its also possible that with a few more resignations, we could get to this sooner rather than later.

You've both described very well why we wont be going down the No-deal path.

As it stands, May can not get a deal through parliament. That means by default we are going to no deal.

We have just a few weeks to avoid that.

The EU after that point will have to invest huge amounts of their own money to deal with no deal. At this point, all political will for any deal evaporates.

This then leaves us in a situation, where we have two options: no deal or revoke A50 / remain. The former is the default.

The later relies on an ECJ ruling giving us the power to revoke. Something that May says she won't use no matter what. Or being at the mercy of the EU to agree to revocation. This relies on political will, and after the EU have spent huge amounts on no deal planning this disappears.

It needs to be stressed at every point here, how no deal is the default and how May's choices have lead to a situation where her routes out of that situation are limited and fraught with difficulty.

No deal is the path of less resistance to get to, but the one with the worst consequences.

The fact that so few Brits have grasped this reality, only serves to make it more likely.

All these talk of a people's vote as if its a viable escape route at this point is deeply unhelpful.

The peoples vote, requires no deal to be taken off the table to even be in play. But that requires May to manage to get the backstop to the Irish border past Parliament, which we know she can't manage without cross party support. Which we know at this point isn't an option.

A people's vote also requires legislation, which takes time. And then organisation before the 29th March deadline. And all of this requires EU political will, which has largely run out.

It all makes a people's vote hugely distracting and misleading from the point of how likely no deal is purely because its the default and past of least resistance. Hence why its been referred to as a risk of accidentally no dealing, because everyone's got their head buried so far in the sand, going, 'Na it won't happen'.

I'd actually like someone to tell me why it WON'T happen beyond a unicorn piped dream and wishful thinking, because no deal is just so bad.

By that, I mean, give me a plan of how we avoid it.

Anyone who voted remain and made the point of how leave had no plan for how we leave, now needs to apply that same logic and forget wishful thinking, which they once criticised and that suddenly seems to have appeared in the previously rational, and come up for a plan for how we don't no deal.

If you can manage to do that and come up with something viable, you need to start accepting how high the risk of no deal actually is.

We are back at 'what's the plan stan?'.

Help me out here people. What is it, if its not no deal?

I just do not believe that

All your argument consists of is a belief. That's what got us in this mess in the first fucking place.

Right now we need a plan and practical method not a flipping belief.

Listen to yourself. What are you actually saying?!

I agree: it's not a path - it's the inevitable unintended because of ignorance consequence of the majority of the Leavers. Being charitable which I don't really feel like being , they genuinely believe in the unicorns and sunny uplands of life outside the EU, where the British Empire still exists and the rest of the world accepts British English exceptionalism. The "Don't they know who we are?" mentality.

There is a small core of hardcore Brexiters who do know that the world has changed but still want a hard/no-deal Brexit because as disaster capitalists, they expect to make a fortune picking over the carcass of the UK economy

Corbyn might not have been in the first group initially although there are those that argue that he is really a Lexiter but , given that the only way Labour's 6 Tests can be passed is by staying in the EU yet he continues to insist on "the UK will leave the EU" on the basis that "the people have spoken" means that he is guilty of hypocrisy at best, doublethink at worst (or is it the other way around? )

He needs to show some fucking leadership and acknowledge that his 6 tests and leaving the EU are incompatible.

At the moment, he, like May, is arguing to make the UK worse off. If he were honest, he should admit that. But he's a coward.

an angry place mat king

Also, a GE IS NOT a guarantee of a solution either. The polls suggest that a GE is unlikely to produce a significantly different outcome.

And we will already have passed the point where the EU has to start investing seriously in no deal, and whilst we have an election nothing gets done on our own no deal planning.

We Do Not have the time to indulge fantasies of another GE which will magically solve the problem.

It's la la land and possibly makes the default crisis situation even worse.

Mike Galsworthy@mikegalsworthy

Brexit’s lead economist Prof Patrick Minford on UK car industry: [2012]

“You are going to have to run it down ... in the same way we ran down the coal industry and steel industry. These things happen.”

This is the neoliberal Brexit plan.

The UK has already passed the bill to implement ATAD on schedule in 2019
So that will happen even after Brexit

Thanks for that information. So, it seems that JRM et al. will be subjected to the ATAD after all.

At this point the beliefs and unicorns of Remainers are starting to be a real problem.

It's bad enough dealing with those of Leavers.

I'm actually pretty pissed off at Remainers doing this. It's hypocrisy.

Thanks for that information. So, it seems that JRM et al. will be subjected to the ATAD after all

Depends on who has those all important Henry VIII powers...

Easy to say we won't stick to it out of the EU and with no deal.

Guarantees and promises are meaningless at this juncture.

Honestly we are at no deal or remain being the only real viable alternatives.

Just like Donald Tusk said.