Westminstenders: May plays Sale of the Century

[RedToothBrush]

Theresa May is currently in the midst of a campaign to sell her deal to the public. Unfortunately she appears that there are only 649 people she needs to sell it to, and that's not going so well.

She attempted a sales pitch to potential Labour rebels and succeeded in getting them to actively decide to vote against her.

There are currently 100 backbench tories who have stated they will vote against it, which makes parliamentary maths very difficult.

There is a rising support for plan b in the form of Norway Plus. This may make Remainers less likely to vote for a deal but persuade some leavers to back May.

The ECJ A50 Court case has been heard. Judgment has not been given yet. Its due 'soon'.

Next week the Withdrawal Agreement will be debated in Parliament with the vote due at 7pm on Tuesday 11th December.

Expect a rough couple of weeks.

Hester Richard North has far more knowledge and doesn't use foul insults that PNorth does.
RNorth superb technical blogs have been valuable sources of information that noone else has been producing

However, the possibility that his dream of leaving the EU may be squashed has made his recent blogs quite vitriolic.
He's always been very scathing about Gina Miller and Carole Cadwalladr, but that used to be just an occasional remark.

PNorth has seemed positively eager on No Deal a long time ago, as he apparently believes it is first necessary to destroy the country and bring it down to rock bottom, in order to save it.

PNorth sounds very angry and frustrated

• maybe not v successful in life, as he claimed never to have had 5,000 quid - when a prominent Remainer started suing him for a particularly vile insult.

@BigChoc

Thanks for that explanation. I misunderstood your policies list as one designed to appeal to Leave voters with the intention of encouraging them to vote differently in another EU referendum.

In as much as you suggest that the “left behind” have shown a willingness to see the country move in a quite different direction from the path it has been on for the last 20 or 30 years I agree with you.

Also agree that far too few are prepared to forego some of their own comforts and opportunities, all we get from many is hand wringing as you say.

It means nearly a third of the Cabinet have shown support for Norway.

Then why didn't the stupid fools get together and speak out in November 2016? It's a bit late now. There is a good chance that moderate Leavers and Remainers would accept this option.

peregrina because they didn't want to face down the ERG.
Now they judge the electoral conequences from an economic crash are worse than those from a Tory civil war.

Mogg's humiliating failure to muster 48 letters have shown that the ERG isn't the powerful machine that they feared

Also, Gove is a comparatively recent convert, since his Cabinet job showed him the likely consequences of a hard Brexit to food & water supplies

It seems likely that many used to be as (wilfully ?) ignorant as Raab and DD,
but the intense cabinet briefings on No Deal consequences have finally alerted them to the looming catastrophe

Thanks Bigchoc that explained it.

That racial bullying incident has had a heartening response: the appeal for the family has raised £154,000.

In response, Mrs May says:
“If you look at what happened, the real spirit of the British people came in the response… to that incident,” she said.
“Most people were sickened and angered by it and the huge response and support shows our true spirit and shows that we are a welcoming country.”

(Welcoming? Her? ... ‘queue-jumpers’ etc etc.)

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/30/syrian-boy-jamal-asks-people-not-to-attack-his-alleged-bully-huddersfield

Another minister gone:
mobile.twitter.com/SamGyimah
After careful reflection, I will not be supporting the Government on the EU Withdrawal Agreement. As such, I have tended my resignation as Universities & Science Minister – read more on my Facebook page...

Wow, he's my local MP. I know he'd voted Remain, but thought he was too much of a loyal Toryboy to push it this far. And pushing for a PV, too. Must have got fed up of reading my diatribes - perhaps I'll have to be a bit more polite next time I write to him .

That racial bullying incident has had a heartening response

The PM is right that this response (no doubt by liberal elite snowflakes) gives some reassurance that humanity and standing up against vile prejudice has some place here.

But welcoming? What a welcoming -hostile -go -home -van -environment?

If we were welcoming, this and many other incidents wouldn't have happened in the first place.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bully-who-attacked-syrian-refugee-13667284

Good riddance. I agree that the response to this and the crowdfunding was heartening but it’s depressing that it happened in the first place. The 16 year old perpetrator had a link to Far Right groups. His younger sister was bullied and had her hijab ripped off.
One of the people who died in Grenfell was a young Syrian refugee who was studying engineering. Ironic doesn’t really come close to describing fleeing from a war zone and then dying in a ‘safe’ country due to the local authority’s incompetence and greed.

Robert Pestonn@Peston*

I asked Downing Street if it had anything to say about @SamGyimah resignation.
“Nah. The PM thanks him for his service”.
This is now an automated message 😂

If you were still wondering why the EU doesn't trust us:

The most recent govt minister to say the UK won't be bound by what it signs:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6444079/Hammonds-No-2-LIZ-TRUSS-backs-deal-saying-change-leave-EU-anyway.html

[Treasury #2, Liz] Truss suggests, surprisingly, that once the UK has left the EU it could ignore parts of the deal it doesn't like.

'We can do what we want.
Some things are set in treaties but no parliament can bind its successor.'

Louise
The list of policies I typed is the same one I've been on about for around ten years.
The council tax thing I even wrote to the Treasury about nearly five years ago.
FWIW many of them are advocated by my two favourite magazines (Private Eye and the Economist)

I read a really interesting article by Vince Cable about TM shortly after she became PM.
He said that he had a long discussion with her during their time in coalition and he argued strongly that overseas students showed not be included in the immigration figures as these students paid vast sums of money to universities in tuition fees which was a vital income stream for them and these students were crucial in maintaining the reputation of UK universities and thus encouraging other overseas students to come and study here.
He also pointed out that the students that did stay behind after completing their studies tended to be highly motivated and would end up as high rate tax payers and many of them went on to set up successfully businesses.
He said that TM didn’t actually challenge or disagree with anything he’d said but that her attitude was basically ‘So what?’
He spoke about her having total tunnel vision,bordering on an obsession, with getting immigration down.

TM is a Xenophobe. Its as simple as that. She hates all foreigners.
It colours her judgement on everything.

I lived in the UK for over 40 years before getting my purple passport.
It cost me over £2000 all up, but I did not trust her not to give me a hard time so I did it, despite having ILR in my other passport.

Richard North has far more knowledge and doesn't use foul insults that PNorth does.

He's not as vile as his son but he uses misogynist slurs frequently, and racist slurs occasionally. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I also think that while he is hugely knowledgeable about Brexit, he has a real problem with other people who are also knowledgeable and whose opinions may differ. It is a major blind spot and I think you have to be aware of this when reading his posts.

He is genuinely an expert and has RL experience in the food regulation area. But the rest of his "expertise" doesn't seem to relate to real world professional experience - and the fact that he doesn't like listening to other qualified people with different views makes me hesitant about accepting everything he asserts.

TM is a Xenophobe.

I agree. My theory is that she feels she is only PM by default and wouldn't have got PM based on her time at the home office as she failed there really.

Also even though her family trees do go back in the U.K. several generations her parents were Hubert and Zaidee? Also her surname Brasier sounds a bit French. It's also like Brazier- So I wonder if she or her parents got teased -so they sort of went over the top to be more white British than the next person. I think there's an issue there somewhere. Hasn't anyone who knew her from school spilled any beans?

"We can do what we want. Some things are set in treaties but no parliament can bind its successor."

This doesn't surprise me coming from Truss. It has been Gove's strategy all along which is why he didn't bother to resign over the WA (and because he wants to retain his leverage in the cabinet) as for him the WA is a pretty meaningless means to an end (to do what he and fellow Brexiteers want should TM be ousted). The EU are indeed right to be cautious/sceptical/suspicious!

I agree with Misti about RNorth.

He cannot accept or admit that the logical conclusion to his accurate criticisms of Brexit is not unicorn Flexcit but Remain.

Pete North was a) moaning recently about never being asked to talk on tv or the radio and b) sneering at Mike Galsworthy.

Last night he was tweeting about lefty/Remain QCs "swinging from lamp posts" so I guess that's why he doesn't get asked.

And once, he actually met MG in a pub and MG filmed it. It was excruciating because PN is clearly very un-camera-friendly and MG the opposite. I've got a lot of issues with some of that Remain group (Madeleine Kay) but the sneering at MG is jealousy, I'm sure.

Tatiana RNorth fervently wants to Brexit and have the UK create - and lead - its own large European organisation.
Just because he wanted to avoid the disaster of no deal doesn't mean he wants it enough to ever support Remain.

Most Remainers value FOM and European cooperation, independent of any economic arguments

Leavers' motivations seem to be mostly non-economic - except those conned by the 350 milllion - immigration, sovereignty, nationalism, switching the country to more rightwing politics

TM is a Xenophobe

in which case she'd be at home, squirming with Farage, as you realise how pathetic the notion of "British" or "English" is - as archaeologists discover whenever they start pulling back the soil.

As any fans of Digging for Britain already know ....

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bt8vvf/digging-for-britain-series-7-1-north

(I wonder if they put a Spitfire dig in to wear out the right arms of 90% of UKIPers ?)

Liz Truss is a good speaker, with an excellent line in jokes, which can get you far in politics

Enjoyable speech by Liz Truss, presiding at the Annual Spectator Awards

Worth reading if you need light relief from Brexit - pokes fun at her colleagues

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/full-text-liz-trusss-parliamentarian-speech-the-backstop-andrew-bridgen-and-overpaid-bureaucrats/amp/?twitterr_impression=true

"Now we need to get on and do it and look forward to our future as a proud sovereign nation.

Taking control of our laws border and money,
run not by a bunch of overpaid bureaucrats in Brussels

.... but by a bunch of overpaid bureaucrats in Britain."

_ The far right is marching for Brexit._ Will the left stand against it?

Potential for real trouble, because unlike has-been Farage,
Robinson / Yaxley-Lennon can probably organise many thousands of supporters to swell the 3-old-men-and-a-dog of UKIP
I don't know if the proposed counter-march - intended to dwarf them with numbers - is even a good idea

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/27/far-right-brexit-left

The far-right activist Tommy Robinsonn* will march on London under the banner of “Brexit Betrayal” on Sunday 9 December
– just two days before the parliamentary vote on Theresa May’s deal.

The demonstration represents the real-life, undeniable intersection of the Brexit project and the far right.
The response of both the left and the anti-Brexit movement could define them for years to come.
...
The narrative of national betrayal and imperial nostalgia is at the heart of Brexit, and always has been.
...
For two years now, the British left has been trapped in a logic of triangulation on Brexit.
The overwhelming majority of the left backed remain in 2016, and the overwhelming majority of Labour members now back a fresh referendum.

But as Robinson and Ukip march, many on the left, hamstrung by loyalty to the Labour leadership’s fudge on the subject,
will attempt to argue the impossible:^
that the left should oppose the far right, but accept its greatest achievement.

Well at least another far-right icon pancaked her demo:

Otto English@Otto_English

Katie Hopkins has led a pro Brexit demo in Exeter. Far as I can work out - about 20 people turned up -^
...
Hopkins has nearly a million followers.
Leave Means Leave claims to be a big organisation.
And yet the crowd is about the same size you'd see at a busy bus stop on a Monday morning