Westministenders: The One Where We Finally Get A Leadership Challenge?

[RedToothBrush]

Tick tick tick.

What do we think?

Yes? No?

Another week of wtf-ing at British politics.

LeClerc - not read the whole thing but a lot. My main niggle with it which I think business sector would agree is that it's only a transition which is 'frictionless'. They've faced two years of uncertainty only for this agreement to be temporary. Yes it can be extended (I think) but what nutjob will be in power then and will they extend? It's okay, solves a problem for now and creates more time to move big business/manufacturing abroad in a timely fashion..

Just realised that last thread was not functioning[embarrassed]. But I’ve found you.

I'm torn between feeling utterly relieved that they've summarily failed to get 48 letters, and furious that they're all such spineless, unprincipled bastards that after all this they can't get 48 letters.

^^ This!

And this group is supposed to contain the next PM / Foreign Sec / Chancellor and Home Sec...and they can't organise a coup, never mind run a country

These are the problems with the deal:

1. It takes UK out of the Single Market after the transition period, therefore no more free movement of services, capital (or workers), no banking passport, no membership of agencies (euratom, EMA/medicines, EASA/aviation, etc), no 1st-party access to Europol, European Arrest Warrant, Eurojust, Schengen SIS criminal databases.

1. It ties the UK to a highly limited customs union backstop arrangement if no trade deal has been finalised at the end of the transition period. It requires the EU to agree before we can leave, therefore there's potential for us to get stuck in this arrangement long-term, with very little say in the rules and regulations.

1. If the FTA that May wants is actually negotiated....eventually, then it would leave NI only in a CU-SM backstop, and will only deliver tariff-free trade between GB & EU but not customs-free frictionless trade in goods, and we'd also lose all our current trade deals.

1. It prolongs the uncertainty until at least 2021, and potentially for many more years after.

1. It's be much worse than the deal we've currently got. Other than the disaster capitalists, we'd just about all be worse off as a result.

There is only one good deal and that is Remain.

I love the idea that Moggy and little Steve Baker are furiously messaging each other and other people trying to work out where it all went wrong.

Thank you Tatiana and Hazard
From what you are describing it seems cunning from an EU point of view, in that existing EU companies can 'bow out gracefully' (end production runs but not reinvest) and sufficient 'pain' to put pressure on the UK (gov) to actually do some management.
This gives an opportunity to the UK to chose whether to really leave, or do a bit of backpedaling.
Since IIRC from a while back the UK had been out of order with some of the security aspects, it will stop some of the 'leakiness' where data might end up going to the USA which would not be good if the UK really drops out subsequently.

Anyone else incredulous at the thought of Moggy using anything other than one of those early two piece telephones?

No wonder he can't run a proper WhatsApp group, he might as well ride a penny farthing.

tatiana The kind of trade deal we negotiate is not fixed in stone by any WA
A50 specifies only a framework, which is about as binding as a fond hope

I'm pretty sure that if the UK changes its mind even towards the end of the transition period and wants Norway+ that the EU would happily stop the clock and negoiate that instead

The problem lies on the Uk side - the EU always wanted the softest possible Brexit, to be as near to EU membership as possible
By the end of 2021, the change in public opinion might push a new PM / new govt towards Norway+

The ideals of the ERG/brexiters/far right and the ones of the Conservative party are too different and cannot be reconciled into one party. Both of them would be better on their own.

The same could also be said of the Labour party and Momentum. I would welcome this kind of 'once and for all' schism, if only because I see it as the only way we might realistically get to revisit FPTP, and hopefully get a system of PR.

If this WA does not pass, then the default is No Deal
There is currently no feasible mechanism to force Remain

Blair wants No Deal to force a Rejoin,
basically wanting cliff edge misery that risks essential supplies of food and meds

I think it is too ruthless to risk many vulnerable lives, including those of Westministenders who have posted that they or their families depend on meds

Blair wants No Deal to force a Rejoin,
basically wanting cliff edge misery that risks essential supplies of food and meds

If you're right about that BCF it's an appalling strategy. Just as I don't understand Brexit at any cost a remain/rejoin at such a cost would be terrible.

rebel Blair said - long before we knew what this WA would contain - that any WA should be voted down
He knows the A50 default is No Deal
and that there is no route atm to revocation

We know how ruthless he is about collateral damage when he really wants a particular policy

I've read some extreme Remainers who copied him and who've since been advocating No Deal for months, if the alternative is a WA
precisely to shock people into a quick Rejoin

I can see the logic in a no deal but it is too drastic.
The whinging of leavers if they don't get to leave will poison 'remaining'.
It needs a 3 week 'try before you buy' period to show what a no deal REALLY means.
So much depends on what the grownups who run industry will actually do.

Until we see some likelihood that May would revoke or call a PV,
then voting down the WA looks like a No Deal cliff edge

The UK is not remotely prepared for No Deal on 30 March

At the very least, this WA would provide a transition, for the govt and particularly for the NHS and for businesses - like supermarkets - to adjust their supply chains to life after Brexit

LeClerc Even though Tusk / Junckers promised an accelerated Rejoin at any time during the transition,
I expect that to take months, not weeks.

"Showing them that we're right" could mean people dying in those months

I see Blair as the opposite, extreme end of the Brexit spectrum to Boris/Mogg, wouldn't trust or support any of them.

The 'deal' as summarised above is sufficiently harsh to make businesses take notice but not harsh enough and 'Leaver' enough to get the general public's 'feelz' who will simply brand it as EU bullying.

{"Showing them that we're right" could mean people dying in those months}
Yes I fully appreciate that and am also very glad it isn't my problem to sort out.

Bigchoc The kind of trade deal we negotiate is not fixed but it is nonetheless limited 1. by the deal and 2. by the red lines of the current government.

You can’t be ‘sure’ of anything in this circumstance. What we are signed up to with this deal is as I outlined above. If nothing changes politically that is broadly what will transpire.

It’s no use saying we can change our minds because the government might not. To agree a deal on the basis that we may be able to change it at a later date is very risky. And anyway a Norway+ deal isn’t that much better for us than the current one.

If this WA does not pass there may be some kind of seismic change in government, possibly a GE, possibly a Labour government, then everything is to play for.

Blair is right that the deal is a dead end and the worst of all possible worlds. It’s not a compromise that ends squabbling but a fudge that will create relentless, unending shitstorms.

As I understand it, the People’s Vote campaign (which is huge and growing) aims to provide constituents with the tools to persuade MPs to vote down the deal. The belief is that this would lead to a short extension of A50 and a new ref - between May’s deal and remain. They do not believe that no deal would be contemplated at all.
The position seems to be that the act of Brexiting must be prevented if at all possible. Exit and rejoin is not in the plan at all - although if (when?) we do Brexit, rejoin would become the new focus.

I might have got it wrong though It was a long meeting and was a couple of weeks ago - a lot has happened since!

That’s right Trees.

I’m not a big fan of another referendum because I think it’s perpetuating all the flaws of the first. Highly manipulable mob votes are no substitute for actual government. And we can’t keep throwing the dice and hope it falls the way we want.

Robert Peston @peston
The DUP’s 10 MPs will be abstaining on pretty much every finance bill vote tonight, I understand. This is to put the government on warning that the party is close to ripping up the “confidence and supply” agreement that allows @theresa_may to govern. This is a serious blow to...

...the PM’s authority. And is all down to the DUP’s pessimism that the PM will amend in any significant way the EU Withdrawal Agreement that it sees as driving a regulatory wedge between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. And if Tory MPs see their industrial action as...

...increasing the risk of an imminent general election, they will launch that long-planned and delayed coup against her pronto.

Beth Rigby @bethrigby
The govt have insisted that the confidence and supply arrangement with the DUP still stands. But part of that deal is the DUP supporting govt on Budget votes & DUP MPs just abstained on the finance bill vote. That’s serious

NEW: DUP source “The govt have got to remember confidence & supply on the shared priorities of Brexit which is control of borders, money & preservation of the Union. They can’t act cavalierly & breach sections of C&S and expect business as usual.” Abstention a “warning shot”

So confirmation of what we pretty much knew and understood at the back end of last week.

A PV is a huge risk
but voting down the WA with just a vague hope that May / MPs will panic and Remain is a HUGE risk

The most likely thing to happen in that case is that there would be a political logjam;
MPs would argue endlessly without agreement.

So the catastrophic default No Deal would happen

Tom Newton Dunn @tnewtondunn
1. By voting against the Govt on the Finance Bill tonight (to back a Corbyn amendment), has the DUP broken the confidence and supply agreement? Here’s the wording - it’s pretty clear it has.

2. So what does Theresa May do about it? Technically, she should suspend any further payment of the £2bn of taxpayers’ money that the DUP have twisted out of her as their price. But she won’t.

3. It’s a great irony that Labour hasn’t got the discipline to muster enough of their own MPs through the division lobbies to defeat the Govt even when the DUP vote with them. They couldn’t tonight.

Labour need a rocket up their asses. Just total incompetence.