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?

[HesterThrale]

Yes I suppose we are agreeing DGR!

I think the EU are getting a bit fed up with the U.K. faffing about. They’ve been patient, but Junker is speaking his mind today:

Jean-Claude Juncker has called on the UK to "get your act together" over Brexit, branding some Britons "entirely unreasonable" for expecting Brussels to put forward a solution.

www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/jean-claude-juncker-tells-brits-to-get-your-act-together-over-brexit-1-5834585

[BigChocFrenzy]

imo, without the US in particular coming in, Britain was strong enough to defend its own territory,
but would never have been strong anywhere near strong enough to liberate France & beyond

Hence, Churchill would have been ousted and replaced by a PM who would have signed a peace agreement,
in which Britain agreed to stay out of Europe, in return for which Hitler would have promised to leave it and its empire alone.

The latter is what many Tories wanted - and to be fair many wc Labour supporters & leaders - as they didn't care what happened in Europe, but did care about keeping the empire.

[jasjas1973]

Chamberlain is head and shoulders above May, who is on par with Cameron, well, actually DC has no equal

The UK 's role over 2 WW's was truly heroic, in both instances we could have kept out of it and sat back, we did not and paid a very high price.

That is the irony of the brexitiers, they bang on an on about the fucking war, yet their very actions are totally at odds with a UK that has always been an integral part of European history, they really do want us to stand aloof from the europeans.

Unless of course we can send back any refugees those pesky french let through lol!

[BigChocFrenzy]

"The PM said talks would continue, although the EU has repeatedly warned negotiations over the withdrawal agreement will not be reopened."

May and the Tory party - excluding the batshit ERG faction - need to face reality.
So does Corbyn - if he is really arrogant enough to believe he could negotiate a better deal, with his red lines.

The WA will not be improved.

Maybe the EU will give enough of a face-saving statement that almost all the Tory party can grab hold of,
but it would NOT affect the legal terms of the backstop
(unless all agree the UK could choose to extend transition instead of the backstop being activated)

Even so, since the DUP would all vote against, plus the hardcore ERG,
the WA would also need 62+ Labour MPs (by my last calculation)

So in effect would probably need Corbyn to accept / tolerate the WA instead of No Deal

Hmm, my estimate of 40% chance for WA may have been a bit high !

[jasjas1973]

Chamberlain was actually a big fan of the RAF and in particular single seat/engine fighters, as early as 1932 he was advocating re arming the RAF.....churchill wanted twin engined planes, which proved to be a disaster in 1940.
Labour had an incompetent pacifist leader who wanted to disband the Army etc.... history repeating itself!!!

[Peregrina]

Yet Churchill is the Leavers great hero. Even he though was ambivalent - we could have joined the EEC at the beginning, but he still had half an eye on the Commonwealth and another half on the 'Special relationship' with the US. I sometimes wonder whether he had a particularly rosy view of the USA because his mother was American.

[frumpety]

Why this sudden influx of migrants attempting the channel crossing by boat? I know we are talking about handfuls of people, but apart from a couple of stories over the last couple of years, this seems new ? Is it or is it just being portrayed that way in a squirrel way ?

[Buteo]

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

And the Russians don’t forget.

It wasn’t just the RAF that was built up during 1938/9 though - there were dozens of ordnance factories built during that time as well.

[Peregrina]

They also began to work out what would be the best diet to keep people fed but still maintain productivity. So not at all like the last two years, where we have had silly slogans and extremists telling us what is wrong with May's plans, but offering nothing of their own.

[jasjas1973]

Why this sudden influx of migrants attempting the channel crossing by boat?

The french have disbanded the camps and scattered migrants along the channel coast, port security is much higher too.
It is a sure fire way to extract money from the refugees "here is a boat, a compass app, now give me 5000 euros"

Personally very surprised it didn't start a whole lot earlier.

Anyone see how much Javid's holiday is costing him? £840 per night per person!
How the other half live!!!! no wonder they don't give a stuff about our public services or how much more expensive our holidays will become as the £ falls.

[ShowerOfClowns]

Place Mat King

[Hasenstein]

PMK - and thanks as ever, Red, for the new thread. I can see you still gamely opening a new thread in 10 years' time, as any developments (Brexit, WA, Revoke) will not bring the country together.

In fact, I can't imagine what would. Maybe revoke, with a promise to reinvoke later, but everyone is by then so fed up that the subject is quietly dropped and we can then get on with rebuilding all those bridges we've been stupidly burning.

[1tisILeClerc]

{Why this sudden influx of migrants attempting the channel crossing by boat?}
It has also been relatively mild of late. The pictures of the Iranians in the papers today would probably have frozen to death when the real cold weather sets in. In an open dinghy getting showered with seawater in a literally freezing wind is harsh.
As noted previously, Germany managed to have a fair stab at dealing with around a million walking 'immigrants', not a couple of hundred that the UK is getting worked up about.

[1tisILeClerc]

Good to see that Freedom of Information requests are being turned down/ignored in significant numbers.
With this extra chartering of ferries, surely the problem is that there is insufficient capacity to process the paperwork (customs/security) not the space on ferries which work just fine at the moment. Unless it is actually a covert plot to actually deport EU citizens from the UK.

[Sostenueto]

France is well aware of the people selling tickets to desperate refugees. They sit in cafes openly selling them. The French choose not to do anything about it. After all they don't want them there do they? Two reporters last week exposed how openly this dreadful trade is being plied.

[Sostenueto]

Any fool knows you could never have had a peace deal with Hitler. Absolute rubbish!

[bellinisurge]

@1tisILeClerc - they can turn down Freedom of Information requests if law allows but can't ignore them. Law doesn't allow that except in really unusual circumstances.

[Sostenueto]

Strike a deal with a man who eradicated 6 million Jewish people. Yeeez!

[Peregrina]

Strike a deal with a man who eradicated 6 million Jewish people. Yeeez!

I don't know why you think that. I lot of the upper classes admired Hitler, not just Edward VIII and the Mitfords. Try reading Travellers in the Third Reich to get a flavour of how many people went along with it.

[1tisILeClerc]

{Strike a deal with a man who eradicated 6 million Jewish people. Yeeez!}
It is very dangerous to underestimate the amount of horror that governments through history have meted out on those they see as 'undesirable'. While I would not say that the British were at the forefront in atrocities in the past, (based on the fact I don't know and don't wish to research) the British government are not shrinking violets either.
British activities in India for example make difficult reading.

[BigChocFrenzy]

If you read literature from the time - and newspapers, not just the Daily Heil - few British people cared what happened to the Jews and far fewer would have gone to war to save them

Remember, even enlightened Britain - and US and everyone else - refused to go to war to prevent the genocide of up to 1 million people in Rwanda even in 1994
And Rwanda had no powerful allies who would have started a WW
It's just 1 million Rwandans aren't important enough for maybe a few dozen British lives and a billion quid.

Hitler hadn't murdered 6 million when WW2 started, or even got into mass extermination.
So they couldn't even have known - no social media or even TV then.

More importantly - from the British nationalist pov - he was actually very reluctant to get into a war with Britain, whom he regarded as fellow Anglo-Saxons

He had no interest in conquering Britain or its empire:
He wanted to rule most of Europe and destroy the USSR communists.

The UK was a world power and - without a war - would have been strong enough to be confident atreaty woukd hold

If the UK had known beforehand - crystal ball ! - that WW2 would bring the country down from a world superpower with an empire covering half the world,
to a near-bankrupt afterwards, that has only reached medium rank since...

Then 100% certain that the Uk govt - even Churchill - would have signed a peace treaty and said do what you want in Europe
Some feared the empire would be weakened - hence the appeasers in all parties - but noone could have imagined how WW2 would crush UK power so massively & permanently

I've come across quite a few rightwing conservatives who bitterly resent Churchill for - in their opinion - throwing away an empire & world power status to save Europe (he never did it to save the Jews)

They would have preferred too that the USSR was destroyed much earlier and that the USA had not taken over so much of what previously belonged to the UK

[BigChocFrenzy]

A flavour of UK opinion at the time, is the now infamous, but then well-received, Daily Mail leader
written by its then owner - the same family still own them

"Hurrah for the Blackshirts":^

[1tisILeClerc]

With the USA pulling out or expressing a wish to do so, of some military 'campaigns' there is a reasonable risk that more try to escape Africa and head to Europe. The USA and a coalition of EU 'peacekeepers' are keeping a reasonable lid on things at the present, which was made worse by the removal of Ghaddaffi and Saddam Hussain.
The world is smaller and more connected than some 'isolationists' would have you believe.

[BigChocFrenzy]

Especially with the US pulling out of Syria, Afghanistan ... and anywhere else his bestie Putin suggests

Expect Russia to ramp up mass murder in Syria to wipe out opposition to their man Assad, in case - quite likely - Trump is not re-elected in Nov 2020 or even leaves before.

Hence more millions fleeing Syria

[1tisILeClerc]

Whilst a bit of an odd diversion from this tack, with the massive destruction of buildings, which are predominantly concrete this will have a significant negative effect on the preservation of the planet as around 8% of 'greenhouse gasses' are attributable to the manufacture of concrete. So while many countries are attempting to 'save the planet' others are indulging in vast programmes to destroy it.