Westministenders: Well this is getting interesting!

[RedToothBrush]

The Minister responsible for writing a deal with the EU has succeeded in coming to an agreement. And has subsequently resigned because he can not agree with it. This man previously didn't know where Dover was, and why this was important. This man is a solicitor used to writing and reading complicated documents.

And we are supposed to believe he has done the honourable thing and has quit on a matter of principle. And has in no way, been a Carpetbagger all along and has deliberately intended to scupper a deal.

Mundell is not wrong about his former Cabinet College but its not terribly polite.

Esther has fucked off too. She was cut out the loop over the UC slow down and was precorded as civil servants thought she'd go crackers if she gave a live interview. This seems consistent with reports that she threw a tantrum in the Cabinet meeting, demanding a vote, before Sir Humphrey told her to refer to the Cabinet Handbook that states that votes are not allowed.

Rees-Smugg seems to have triggered a split in the ERG and has submitted a letter to Graham. Graham has been to see Julian, to tell him that he's not had enough fan mail - yet. Other ERG seem more content to just attempt to vote the deal down. Will there be a confidence vote? If there is, will May win? If she does she gets a special prize of 12 months immunity albeit with the booby prize of still having to get a deal through Parliament.

May now seems to be running a minority government as there are suggestions that the confidence and supply deal with the DUP is over. Kate Hoey appear to have joined the DUP. Perhaps she should have resigned from the Labour party first.

Gove was offered the poison chalice of the Brexit Secretary post. Initial reports said he baulked at the responsibility. Will he resign? Is he just going to go for the top job now? There is now suggestion, he hasn't rejected it afterall. Maybe she should just abolish the department and reallocate resources to the Cabinet office (like she's already done anyway).

Mordaunt is meeting the PM this afternoon to be told personally that there isn't a cat in hell's chance that May will have a free vote over Brexit. Just so she can get the PR for her leadership bid. Resignation scheduled for this afternoon.

Hunt and Javid just sat on the front bench after making noises to please leavers and set themselves up for their leadership bid.

Johnson is lurking. No statement today. Got some ringing around to get supporters for his leadership bid? Will he be the stalking horse?

Loathsome and Fox, admit their political careers have reached their zenith, and they got a cat in hell's chance of getting another Cabinet post. They are not resigning. Today at least.

Greyling is currently silent. There is speculation that his resignation is running late. Twitter is having a field day with jokes.

Duncan has said that an ERG candidate won't be able to form a government - implying that Tories would resign the whip if they did.

Stewart, has done his honourable best to support May through thick and thin, with his best Comical Ali impression and spouting any old bollocks on the radio. Bless Little Rory.

Neill retweets him. Soames doesn't sounds unlike them both. Morgan wouldn't mind a Cabinet job again. Soubry doesn't really care who is in charge as long anymore so long as its not the ERG.

Hancock said in Cabinet that he couldn't guarentee no deaths in a no deal situation. Leavers do not have an alternative idea to May's deal but No Deal. They don't mind risking Hancock being unable to protect people from death.

There are 10 days to go until the EU Summit. We have no idea if we will have a clear PM. Two days later we find out if unilateral revokation is an option to save our necks from disaster if we get that far.

If there is a no confidence vote, its penciled in for Tuesday.

The only Brexit certainity you can be sure of is this thread won't make it til then.

So here in the land of protest - we avoided our local town this morning and went to the nearest small village. At 9am the roads are blocked with people in yellow jackets blowing hunting horns and stopping traffic (protest about fuel prices).

Themselves ?

Not a popular view but they need to be paid better in order to attract better quality candidates. And after this debacle is all over (in a decade or so or more) a new rule introduced that prospective MPs must have had a 10 year serious career (at least) before joining the HofC.

It’s one of the truisms of business that you incentivise the rich by paying them more and incentivise the poor by paying them less. That’s the rationale behind the explosion in executive pay and benefits austerity.

Higher pay tends to attract people who want the position for the wrong reasons and makes them complacent.

I don’t know wtf we can do. Entrance exams? IQ tests? That might have done for David Davis, Esther McVey and Corbyn. But what of those who have apparently good brains - Liam Fox - doctor, Dominic Raab - Oxford educated lawyer, Cameron - first in PPE - but don’t use them?

tatiana . Or worse still, use them in terrible ways.

That twitter video is truly depressing to have EVERYTHING he says to be shown to be incorrect. Brexit is complicated so the odd slip is likely but this, like about a third of the HoC having no real clue after 2 1/2 years is staggering. It's like they only glance at the headlines in the Express or similar 'paper' and don't even bother to think about what was written.

Cameron has a first in PPE, meaning he is qualified to wear a Hi Vis jacket and a safety hat?

Women will get a raw deal from Brexit. Well, I guess we knew that already.

Caroline Criado-Perez giving reasons for a People’s Vote:

Women Are Still Being Shut Out By This Blokes' Brexit

m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/women-brexit_uk_5bed22c3e4b09f467006b955?ncid=other_twitter_cooo9wqtham&utm_campaign=share_twitter&guccounter=1

Troll (or terminal stupidity) alert on the Holiday in April thread.

I really don't want to start a significant argument about it as I agree it will be 'shit', but it is shit for men and women.
I do believe in 'equality' with the only diversion from this being actually giving birth to a baby human and breastfeeding which obviously is a failing of men.
Women voted for Leave in roughly comparable numbers to men (within a couple of percent except a divergence where women under 25? mostly voted remain). If 'leaving' is disproportionately bad for women, why did they not more vote for remain?
Were you all seduced by the dulcet tones of Mr Farage? ( I have a bucket at the ready).

Andrea Loathsome apparently wants to revisit the ability to use "technological solutions" to solve the border problem in NI

Does it not cross their tiny minds that if there were a technological solution, Switzerland and the countries it borders, and Norway and Sweden, Canada and the USA (you get the picture) might, just might, possibly, have made use of such a solution

It's yet another example of the UK belief in "exceptionalism": the only reason a solution hasn't been invented yet, is because the UK hasn't set its mind to it because that is all it will take

Rory Stewart @RoryStewartUK
I have just been asked by a highly intelligent hard Brexiteer - with two masters degrees - whether the backstop would mean that we have to join the European army. The answer is “no”. We would be leaving the EU, the ECJ, EU parliament, immigration policy and any idea of “EU army”

Rory if you remember was going full on Trump on the radio this week.

I'd love it, if for one minute we could have a single politician that could be both mildly credible, moderately intelligent and not a complete twonk.

From any party.

Couldn’t agree more RTB

at the comments on DM interview with May.

Yeah. Trolls central.

If 'leaving' is disproportionately bad for women, why did they not more vote for remain?

LeClerc, I expect that, like men, many were unaware of the real consequences and implications of Brexit, for anyone.

Higher pay tends to attract people who want the position for the wrong reasons

With pay set too low though, surely many good professionals are deterred, leaving only the well-heeled to stand.

With pay set too low though, surely many good professionals are deterred, leaving only the well-heeled to stand.

This.

Especially if you have to add in London living costs.

It's the greatest pity that with Parliament needing major renovations that they didn't take the opportunity to move it elsewhere, like Birmingham, Manchester, Durham or Newcastle. It would still be a long way from John O'Groats and Lands End, but that is just a matter of physical geography.

Hester, My only thought was that discussing the rights or wrongs of men/women while drowning in a swamp filled with alligators is making a division where unity is needed. Those arguments can surely wait until we are out of this particular swamp.

LeClerc Men and women are equally responsible for having got us in this mess

However, millenia of history and also current affairs show us that when there is poverty and / or oppression,
on average women fair even worse
This is to do with the rl situation of being out-muscled and also being left with most of the responsibility for DC

The oppression and disadvantages women face are a result of how the various forms of human society are organised,
but the reasons why societies are organised to our disadvantage are the biological differences between men and women

Of course there are many other disadvantaged groups who will suffer:
the poor & unskilled as a class, the disabled, BAME Brits, any immigrants not wealthy and sheltered

Superb summary of Andrew Bridgen in the Times. Who the hell votes for these people? A country really does get the democracy it deserves.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/b7013de0-e9e6-11e8-b4e6-5632a3a9d8ab

The Midlands Machiavelli is an assassin who’d put his weapon on expenses
matt chorley

In these dramatic times at Westminster, there are dim forces at work. None dimmer than Andrew Bridgen, the Tory MP for North West Leicestershire. You won’t have heard of him, but he is the backbench brains of the operation that has been telling journalists for weeks that the 48th letter to trigger a vote of no confidence in the prime minister is in, or about to go in, or will be once he has finished writing it.

These people want to run the country, and they can’t run a stationery cupboard. My concern is that he thought he could write all 48 himself. Have you seen the price of stamps?

Only last week he claimed that Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, could destroy the letters to save May. Bridgen wanted “to see whether he has recently bought a deluxe shredding machine”. Because Bridgen is the sort of assassin who puts his weapon on expenses.

If May is ousted nobody would be more surprised than Bridgen himself, having led unsuccessful efforts to unseat David Cameron, John Bercow and Keith Vaz. His track record for predictions is like my track record for giving up alcohol. And both involve talking nonsense. Before the Tory party conference, Bridgen was quoted in one paper predicting May would be “booed” during her speech, and in another paper that she would face an “empty hall”. Booed by an empty hall? How does that work?

But then he’s not what you would call a details man. He’s one of those who thinks a trade deal could be struck “in an afternoon”. He’s also big on violent imagery: wanting to stab Cameron “in the front so I can see the expression on his face”, and saying that May had rolled a rock “over her own head”. On Thursday he rushed on to BBC Breakfast to dismiss her deal as “even worse” than Chequers. So you’ve read it, asked the presenter. “No . . . I haven’t.”

Last month he claimed on TV that the “good people” of Ireland will also want to leave the EU once they see Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit “land of milk and honey”. Which I think is all we’ll have to eat then. And in a hilariously bad radio interview he boasted: “As an English person I have the right to go over to Ireland. I believe I can ask for a passport, can’t I?” No Andrew, you can’t. No passport, blue or otherwise.

In recent months he has spoken to the press on the burka, the Archbishop of Canterbury, drugs, midwifery, immigration, a National Trust memorial to executed gay men, the Scottish tax system, aid for India, gagging orders, bonuses, university credit cards, uninvestigated burglaries and the BBC 6 Music presenter Cerys Matthews.

He spends his days loitering near journalists in parliament’s Portcullis House, dispensing what is known in the trade as “utter rubbish”. His ubiquity has earned him daft monikers, including “the Midlands Machiavelli”, the “dean of dissent”, and the “pre-washed potato magnate”, which refers to his vegetable prep business rather than his looks. It is why he is known by unkind Tory colleagues as “spud-u-hate” and “thick as mash”.

You might keep an eye out for him in future, but that won’t be the full picture. Sometimes his quotes are attributed to a “senior Tory MP” — which means it really is total cobblers if even Bridgen won’t put his name to it.

Alex Wickham @alexwickham
The UK's entire supply of Mars bars would run out within two weeks of a no-deal Brexit. How Michael Gove was convinced he couldn't blow up Theresa May's deal:

www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/alexwickham/mars-bars-brexit-no-deal-gove?__twitter_impression=true
Mars Bars Could Run Out Within Two Weeks Of A No-Deal Brexit, Experts Told Michael Gove
You’ve heard about the resignations – but behind this week’s Brexit carnage lies an extraordinary tale of Mars Bars, a secret “Burger Club” in the cabinet, and an ill-fated proposed flight across the Channel.

The stark consequences of a no-deal Brexit were laid bare for Michael Gove at a roundtable meeting with representatives from the food industry last month. There was no sugar-coating it. Mars bars could run out within weeks if the UK left the EU without a deal.

According to an industry insider present, the environment secretary was left reeling by a briefing from the Food and Drink Federation that of the 21 ingredients that make up a Mars bar manufactured at their factory in Slough, two imported products go off within a few days.

In the event of no-deal, gridlock at the port of Dover would effectively shut down one of the country’s main routes for food imports. The ingredients couldn’t be stockpiled. The experts told Gove the UK’s entire supply of Mars bars would run out within two weeks.

And

“The other Brexiteers in the cabinet and a lot of those on the backbenches would go for no deal,” said one friend of Gove. “But Michael would never because he has seen what it means in Defra.”

A second source familiar with his thinking said he did not want to be the person who brought down May and put the country on course for a no-deal Brexit that he would then be blamed for.

I do not believe the penny only dropped last month. If it did, wtf has he been doing for two years?

This is what it looks like.

A pitch as the unity candidate. Fully aware that to win a leadership he has to get through the Conservative Parliamentary Party first. Which has a majority remain leaning. Once the loons have been eliminated and he's still standing, he has a good shot with the grassroots by virtue simply of being a Leaver.

Why has this article been written at all, if not with that in mind?

I don't see men worrying how they will feed their kids...

Tbf a lot of male suicide is linked with feelings of not being able to provide for family.

I think men feel this pressure to provide, it just manifests in a different way, and men have different ways of resolving that feeling.

Men feel more able to walk out or walk away from their children. Or to just kill themselves. Whereas Women continue with the responsibility whilst suffering. I guess there is something about the indignity of suffering that is ultimately the difference. And that's to do with male / female socialisation.

Not a popular view but they need to be paid better in order to attract better quality candidates. And after this debacle is all over (in a decade or so or more) a new rule introduced that prospective MPs must have had a 10 year serious career (at least) before joining the HofC

I actually agree with this. I know it’s unpopular but being an PM is (or at least should be) a really tough gig. It deserves to be well paid. A lot of head teachers or GPs would probably have to take a pay cut to become an PM.
The ludicrous.

I don’t know wtf we can do. Entrance exams? IQ tests? That might have done for David Davis, Esther McVey and Corbyn. But what of those who have apparently good brains - Liam Fox - doctor, Dominic Raab - Oxford educated lawyer, Cameron - first in PPE - but don’t use them

I think the issue here is those people show good academic intelligence. But that’s not the only form of intelligence that’s worth anything. Emotional intelligence, life experience, simple common sense.
I’m sure we all know extremely intelligent people who have spectacularly little common sense.

How about paying MPs more, but not allowing them to do another job on the side? And I don't see why there couldn't be a test for everyone who wants to apply to be a candidate - it could involve relevant reading and aural comprehensions, giving a presentation, a writing task, and maybe some critical thinking and maths tasks (basic maths must be important in politics).
References should be taken up, focusing on integrity and work ethic.