Westminstenders: Welcome to 2019

[RedToothBrush]

Welcome to 2019.

Bit of a different thread starter; instead of me speculating what are your predictions for the coming year politically? Will be interesting to see how people are viewing things right now.

How is Brexit going to play out?

Who is going to be framed as the scapegoat for whatever scenario you think likely?

What are going to be the biggest political issues that the media / politicians push (as opposed to what the real issues are)?

What is going to be the most shocking thing that will happen either here or abroad?

What will happen with Trump?

Who will be the next Tory leader and when?

Whats on the cards for the various political parties in general?

[BigChocFrenzy]

Italy has something in common with the UK:
wanting things that mean more public spending, but not being pepared to raise taxes to pay for this.

One of the motives the then Italian govt had in joining the Eurozone, was to instill more fiscal discipline
and reduce the number of crises with the then Italian currency - Lira - and their budget deficit & national debt.

[DGRossetti]

Italy has something in common with the UK: wanting things that mean more public spending, but not being pepared to raise taxes to pay for this.

I think in general that's a human failing - not really attributable to any country. It's how cultures deal with it, that's the key.

If my DF is anything to go by, Italians simply don't trust; and never have trusted the government. It was a running argument between my English DM, and DF. It's also where I get my extreme cynicism from.

Guess my DF has been proved right. Luckily DM passed before she could see it. It would have broken her heart.

[HesterThrale]

Placemat king.

I think May will fail to get her WA through, and go to the EU to ask for an extension of A50, as she’s running out of time. The EU will say you can have more time if you’re having a PV.

She’ll find that very unpalatable. So knowing in her heart that No Deal is a bad idea, it’ll be a choice between 2 choices that she hates: Revoke or PV.

I think in the end she’ll Revoke. And resign. A caretaker leader will be elected, someone untainted by Brexit. Then a GE will be called.
The Brexiteers like Farage and Johnson might initially bluster and complain, but will eventually slink away, tails between legs, as they knew it was impossible.

The EU elections will be held in May with the U.K. involved and fewer UKIP MEPs will be elected. People realise they’re fundamentally incompetent.

[BigChocFrenzy]

DG Germany and the Scandinavian countries support paying sufficient taxes for good services
In Germany, in particular, the CDU have bought in to the whole social contract

This seems common to European Conservative parties that are Christian Democrats - the very positive side of their Christian roots,
totally different to the US Conservative Christians, where poverty is often regarded as a moral failing, which should be punished.
The UK Tory right wing have (mostly) avoided the religious reasons of their US cousins, but agree on punishing the poor to make them improve.

[DGRossetti]

The EU will say you can have more time if you’re having a PV.

Can't see that. The EU has been scrupulous in keeping out of the UKs internal mess. So much so, that I noticed the Express had to invent some shit a few days ago just to make it's knuckle dragging congregation think otherwise.

To be blunt, the EU doesn't need to do anything. They have already stated in plain English the situations in which an extension to A50 might be considered. If the UK wants to humiliate itself further then it could try and ask in the absence of those situations.

[DGRossetti]

DG Germany and the Scandinavian countries support paying sufficient taxes for good services In Germany, in particular, the CDU have bought in to the whole social contract

As I said, it's interesting how different cultures address common human sentiments.

The UKs "undeserving" poor stance also mirrors into the sense of entitlement felt by the well off.

[BigChocFrenzy]

This would be encouraging, if I had the slightest faith in anything the disgraed & disgraceful Liam Fox believes, or claims to believe.

AImed to scare the softer ERG into voting for the WA

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/liam-fox-warns-brexit-may-nothappen-bff29nv96

Brexit is on a knife edge and the chances of Britain leaving the European Union are “50-50” if MPs reject Theresa May’s deal,
the international trade secretary says.

[HesterThrale]

DGR it’s often been said that the EU would grant an extension for a good reason like a referendum or election.

forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2290845/second-referendum-or-election-only-way-for-article-50-extension-say-eu

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/22/article-50-extension-unlikely-without-shift-in-uk-politics-say-eu-officials

[1tisILeClerc]

I think the EU would be very wary of doing anything apart from quietly getting on with things necessary to them.
It is blatantly obvious that the UK is completely divided into several factions, not just two, and there is no real 'plan' being proposed by anyone. It is for the UK to come up with a plan and the EU would be strongly criticised if it 'meddled' with UK politics, even as broken as it is.

[mathanxiety]

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/27/police-struggle-to-stop-flood-of-firearms-into-uk

Obviously criminals are a bit more prepared than the police for a no-deal Brexit.

Cooke said that the dynamics of the streets of British cities had changed and that criminals were more willing to use guns: “If they bring them in people will buy them. It’s a kudos thing for organised criminals.”

He said said one factor was a reduction in police proactive work because of government budget cuts leading to big falls in officer numbers: “The ability of law enforcement to respond to this rise in the criminal use of firearms has been hampered by the large reduction in police officers and the resultant diminishing of proactive capability to keep these criminals on the back foot.”

Simon Brough, head of firearms at the NCA, said: “The majority of guns being used are new, clean firearms ... which indicates a relatively fluid supply.”

He said shotguns were 40% of the total, with an increase in burglaries to try and steal them. Handguns are the next biggest category, most often smuggled in from overseas, with ferry ports such as Dover being a popular entry point into the UK for organised crime groups: “We’re doing a lot to fight back against it,” Brough said, adding that compared to other European countries, the availability in the UK was relatively lower.

Gun crime has been rising and the last set of official figures about recorded firearms offences, showing a 5% fall to 6,362 in the year ending June 2018, is seen as a blip against a trend of rising gun offences. Statistics released earlier in 2018 had shown gun crime up 11% in 2017/18, and in the same period, the Metropolitan police said discharges of lethal barrelled firearms rose by 23%. Compared to 2015/16, there has been a 67% increase in the capital alone.

Some in law enforcement tackling serious and organised crime believe more attention needs to be paid to that type of criminality, instead of just the intense focus on the terrorist threat.

Cooke said: “The two greatest national security threats are terrorism and serious and organised crime. Nationally, we need to ensure serious and organised crime gets the same funding as the terrorist threat. More people die after getting shot by serious and organised criminals than by terrorists.”

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/22/uk-organised-crime-can-police-catch-up-national-crime-agency-lynne-owens
Organised crime in the UK is bigger than ever before. Can the police catch up?
Owens said much organised crime in the UK operated all but unchecked. Partly that was because there was so much of it. In her car, Owens had told me that the NCA’s latest figures showed there were 4,629 criminal gangs and syndicates in Britain, employing 33,598 professional gangsters – numbers that become astonishing when viewed in context. The figure of 4,629 means there are more gangs in Britain than staff members of the NCA; 33,598 career criminals translates to more gangsters in Britain than belong to all three big Italian mafias.

Owens’s speech, however, was concerned with why organised crime was so rampant. Testing a taboo on officers criticising their own service, she said one big reason was that the police services, as currently constituted, were not up to the job. “We need to fundamentally re-examine the policing model,” she said. An ancient and fragmented structure of 43 English and Welsh county forces, some of which date back 190 years, had left Britain with little to no “capability to respond” to modern, global criminals. Without wholesale change, she added, “we are going to get left behind. We need to move...”

...Britain ... has quietly become a hub for international organised crime...

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/22/uk-organised-crime-can-police-catch-up-national-crime-agency-lynne-owens
(Long Read)

This is how the shit is really going to hit the fan.

[DGRossetti]

DGR it’s often been said that the EU would grant an extension for a good reason like a referendum or election.

Are we agreeing fiercely here ?

My point was that while that is true, I can't see the EU even suggesting the UK does one of those two things to gain an extension. It is up to the UK to request the extension having secured one of those events.

[DGRossetti]

Apparently the UK needs to be more European ...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46713493

Grandparents should be taken on family holidays, the minister responsible for tackling loneliness has said.

Mims Davies said British people could learn from how Mediterranean nations involve grandparents in their lives.

(contd).

I wonder if they'll pay pensioners for a weeks holiday a year, like they do in Spain (which happens to support the tourist industry off-season ...)

Our hotel was overrun with "pensionistas" on our honeymoon ....

[Sostenueto]

Yep EU just sits back and we have to go to them is quite rightly the thing they have to do. It is a decision we have to make ourselves. Revoke, PV, extension, general election or no deal. So 1:5 chance of any of those happening by march.

[Sostenueto]

Blimey I can't be more involved in my family than I already am so must be European through and through. Mind, I could do with a holiday to get away from the family!

[Sostenueto]

Off out to dinner tonight with dgds best friends parents to discuss arrangements for next summers visit to Sri Lanka where the DC will go with best friends family to help teach English in a primary and high school for 3 weeks. My dgd will be doing an EPQ on the visit. Hope they can get there and back. I suppose its not Europe so should be OK. ( I hope).

[1tisILeClerc]

The 'choice' is only 1 of 3 outcomes for the EU.
No deal, WA or Remain. In some respects the EU don't particularly care how the UK gets to the decision but of course the UK is being scrutinised by those who need to know which will influence how the EU reacts to any 'decision'.
I am sure the EU negotiating team would love to put a sign up on the office door saying to the UK 'leave your decision on March 29 evening and we will get back to you'.

[mybrainhurtsalot]

“The UK will become a grand 'theme park' with golf courses for the Japanese and Americans, and 'historic experience days' like Morwellham Quay and old coal mines, steel mills, old houses and castles etc. Book readings on the moors of the works of the Bronte's, cream teas in Devon.
Mme Tusauds to take over Westminster and open it up more as an attraction. UK government to decamp to a prefab block in Milton Keynes.”

Haven’t read it for years, but England, England by Julian Barnes came to mind when I read your comment @1tisILeClerc

[1tisILeClerc]

{ I suppose its not Europe so should be OK. ( I hope).}
The fact it isn't Europe is probably not relevant. If it is a mess it will be a 'general' mess. There will probably be new procedures but it will just be a case of following whatever is the 'new normal'. A couple of weeks into April might be a bit chaotic but things ought to settle after that. The system works to 'rules' now, and will again, just might be different rules.

[Buteo]

The UK will become a grand 'theme park' with golf courses for the Japanese and Americans, and 'historic experience days' like Morwellham Quay and old coal mines, steel mills, old houses and castles etc.

Hope so, since those are my two employment streams

Interesting comparison upthread between May and Chamberlain being in the running for worst ever PM - my dad always reckoned that the one really important thing that Chamberlain did was buy time for the UK to prepare for war. May has spent the last 2 years kicking the can down the road as well.

[BigChocFrenzy]

Hester At this stage, the EU would only agree to an extension request from the UK if it is in its own interests,
NOT for yet more months of UK squabbling with itself, unable to decide.
So,

either
a PV which includes Revoke and / or WA
or
a GE where one party has Revoke or WA in its manifesto

If it seems both parties say in March just want a GE to help them get a majority, but won't state Revoke or WA as their policy,then
then the EU may well refuse an extension

[DGRossetti]

Interesting comparison upthread between May and Chamberlain being in the running for worst ever PM - my dad always reckoned that the one really important thing that Chamberlain did was buy time for the UK to prepare for war. May has spent the last 2 years kicking the can down the road as well.

She's hardly bought us any time at all - quite the reverse. She's pissed away nearly two years when we could have prepared for a no-deal and compressed them into a couple of months.

And the British role in WW2 was really just to hang on till the US turned up.

[BigChocFrenzy]

Junker:

www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-juncker/eu-is-not-trying-to-keep-britain-in-juncker-idUSKCN1OT00H

"All we want is clarity about our future relations. And we respect the result of the referendum.”
Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission, told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag in an interview.

Juncker said the EU was ready to start negotiating a new deal with Britain right after the British parliament approves the divorce deal.
....
He also said Britain should get its act together.
“And then tell us what it is you want"

[1tisILeClerc]

mybrainhurtsalot
Random thoughts like this are usually my own meanderings but following on from that the UK could be 'Real reality' as opposed to the fashionable 'virtual reality' on computers. Real peasants and urchins in rags. Maybe the 'historical reenactment folks could just use real weapons, and have 'audience participation'.
I heard on the radio a while back that there is a possibility of having steam trains back on some rail routes, running a proper schedule.
Back to the '50's could become a reality.
Heck, this is sounding more like a plan than the Tories have got.

[bellinisurge]

@DGRossetti - I agree with your analysis of Chamberlain and how we "didn't lose " WWII but we owe defeat of the Nazis to US and USSR.

[BigChocFrenzy]

I agree, DG
May has frittered away priceless time, without gaining anything for it
whereas
Chamberlain's delay enabled the build up British military forces - especially RAF planes -
which had been run down and not modernised sufficiently because of the Great Depression and the following economic slump.

(He did want to avoid war with Hitler, but what saves him from being the worst PM is that he also wanted to rebuild a strong military, which would be needed nearly as much if the aim was to avoid war as to wage it.

He came to power in 1937 after Hitler's Germany was already powerful, so it would have been a dangerous gamble going to war any earlier than could be avoided.
The best time for smashing Hitler more easily had long passed
Hence his Munich peace of paper in 1938 - he almost certainly knew it was bollocks)