Westministenders: Teetering on the edge

[RedToothBrush]

12 weeks to go.

There is rising confidence in the Extreme Brexiteer camp as well as open comments about how they can deliberately force through No Deal. Remember No Deal is the default. Every political crisis that takes up time makes no deal more likely and the ERG can just be obstructive to facilitate a political crisis. Parliament DO NOT have the ultimate power to stop Brexit - unless the government effectively allow an option to do so. And there is no sign May will let this ever happen. No Deal takes us back to pre-industrial revolution Britain in many social and economic ways. Which will please Jacob Rees-Mogg no end.

No Deal prep is now costing us a fortune - and is no where near sufficient in its scope. Won't someone think of all the extra that could have been put into the NHS.

Parliament returns next week. I hope you have enjoyed your Christmas break. What will happen in 2019 no one knows; the only certainity is turbulance and lurching from crisis to crisis. If we don't get hit by Brexit, maybe it will be the US shutdown crisis or the collaspe in the Chinese economy that will get us. Economists are nervous and thats generally not a good thing for the average person on the street.

Time to get in the euros, stock up on the tomatoes, invest in books and otherwise batten down the hatches financially whilst we await the coming storm in the hope that the forecasters are as good as Michael Fish in 1987.

Bellini beat me to the link and I echo it is worth reading !

"So what happened on Monday morning, is that the government paid 150 lorry drivers to turn up and have a practice go. A practice go at waiting on the out of service runway, and a practise go at crawling the forty mile round trip to Dover.

Or more accurately, it paid 89 lorry drivers, because, in yet more encouraging scenes, the full 150 didn’t turn up.

The purpose of the exercise was not immediately clear,
and given it was the brainchild, which is to say orphan, of Chris Grayling, it’s likely to remain unknowable." 😂🤯

Thatcher's family wasn't even like my late DF's family who were 'better' working class - until his father dropped down dead prematurely in his early 40s, plunging them into poverty.

Institute for Gov @instituteforgov
The Govt has carried out a trial run of how it will tackle lorry traffic near Dover in the event of a no deal #Brexit. Here's a look at just how much lorry traffic and trade with the EU passes through Dover and other major UK ports
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/implementing-brexit-customs-september-2017

Note this:
The authors say that while most people recognise the customs 'cliff edge' in the UK, not enough attention is paid to a similar cliff edge on the other side of the English Channel. Unless Calais, Dunkirk, Rotterdam and other European ports are also ready for Brexit, British exporters will face significant disruption to their supply chains. Preparation on both sides is particularly vital in the case of the Irish land border. They also note that the Government must successfully deliver its new customs technology programme to avoid disruption at the border after Brexit – but say the system is already facing significant issues because of constricted timelines.

I see there's a stockpiling thread on AIBU. We should take bets on how long before it's squirrelled away into the Brexit topic, but meanwhile we have already got the WWII BlitzSpirit thing going.

Brexit is about men and women and children and livestock and wildlife and plants. We will all be affected.

I regularly get accused of being a bloke on threads

Gonna check with some East Kent folks about the Convoy games .... back later.

but meanwhile we have already got the WWII BlitzSpirit thing going.

Oh god, do I have to go bore them with comparisons of how much we imported in 1939 versus today? And how self sufficient our capability is.

Or just talk about pizza and curry shortages?

Or just go empty the washing machine and start on a massive clear out so I have more space for my tomato mountain?

Oh god, do I have to go bore them with comparisons of how much we imported in 1939 versus today?

I wouldn't bother, unless you're feeling especially bored. Anybody who trots out the WWII narrative is not somebody overly troubled by contact with reality.

Interesting analysis by Peter Kellner on YouGov's massive 25,000-person Brexit poll

^ - and this is why Brexit should never have been allowed to be offered in a referendum without defining the outcome and a plan to get there.

Otherwise, it just becomes a referendum on whether people are unhappy with their lives and want a vague "magic something" to fix everything.

It also shows that continuing to support Brexit would decimate Labour in the following GE^
- a BIG reason to encourage May NOT to Revoke
this has been overlooked as a factor in her actions !^
^
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/05/brexit-corbyn-electoral-catastrophe-yougov-polll^??^
^
"^The larger point is that the nature of the choice has changed since 2016 – 52% voted Leave when it was a general aspiration with little apparent downside.
Today support for Brexit is significantly lower when Leave is more clearly defined.

This pattern is familiar to referendums in different countries:

many people support the broad idea of change, but back away when the details are laid out.
They want “change”, but not “this change”.

That is clearly the case today:
80% of people who voted Leave two years ago still say they want Brexit to go ahead;
but
the figure falls to 69% if the choice is a “no deal” Brexit, and only 55% if the referendum offers the withdrawal agreement.^
^
The rest say they don’t know, or switch to Remain.
(The respective loyalty rates on the other side – Remain voters in 2016 who would stick with Remain today – are significantly higher.)

In short, the electorate is increasingly polarised between a growing majority that wants the UK to stay in the EU and a much smaller, but still significant, segment of the electorate that wants a hard, “no deal” Brexit.
There is little public appetite for compromise between these two positions."

I went with Pizza and KFC.

That and other polls indicate that No Deal would NOT be an electoral disaster for the Tories
because of the FPTP system:

People talking of Thatcher's great 1983 victory over Labour usually don't acknowledge the enormous advantage she had with the left basically splitting into two parties:
Labour and SDP

That didn't just split the vote: it hugely distorted the seats that the Tories won.

Labour probably won't split, but losing over 20% of their vote, as polls indicate could happen, would cause the same electoral disaster under FPTP

May can now gamble that the Tories would win after No Deal and that it would be Labour that would be destroyed

Looking back to the 1980s, it took a decade for Labour to look like a serious party again.

DG alright our kid, you made me tear up! I'm familiar with the Women's Hospital and your wife deserves a medal for putting up with such B.S! Please dont feel you've let your family down.

Glad someone is getting a response from there MP. Heres hoping she packs a punch down westminster.

People also forget that we had difficulty feeding ourselves both during the war and immediately afterwards.

Anyone pick up the story about the Thailand authorities stepping in to protect a Saudi girl who fear she will be executed if she's returned.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-46777848

If I could believe the UK would make such clear statements in protection of someone who is effectively seeking asylum, I might be able to muster some patriotic pride. Instead I have to feel slightly unclean seeing the likes of Farage and his elk draping themselves in the Union Jack.

{Or just go empty the washing machine and start on a massive clear out so I have more space for my tomato mountain?}
You may have been pipped to the post as someone was saying they had bulk bought tomatoes yesterday.

£50 grand to show that you can drive lorries from Manston to Ramsgate. Nice little earner for the lorry drivers though.
Mrsr8 could have done more sterling work with £50K of supplies.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46784643

Theresa May has said she is working on getting further assurances from the European Union so she can win the Commons vote on her Brexit deal.

The PM said that after delaying the vote last month, there was "some further movement from the EU" at December's European Council.

She said further measures would be set out ahead of the vote, now set for Tuesday, 15 January.

However, the EU Commission has said there will be no renegotiation.

Meanwhile, more than 200 MPs have signed a letter to Theresa May, urging her to rule out a no-deal Brexit.

It comes as a major exercise involving more than 100 lorries is being carried out in Kent to test out how to manage traffic queues near the Channel ports in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

The PM's deal - which covers the terms of the UK's divorce and the framework of future relations with the EU - has already been agreed with EU leaders. But it needs to pass a vote by MPs before it is accepted.

The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 whether the deal is passed by MPs or not.

Mrs May, who was at Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool to launch a 10-year plan for the NHS, said that after delaying the vote on her Brexit deal last month, she attended the European Council, where there was "some further movement from the EU".

She said she had been speaking with European leaders in the intervening period.

"In the coming days what we'll set out is not just about the EU but also about what we can do domestically, so we will be setting out measures which will be specific to Northern Ireland; we will be setting out proposals for a greater role for Parliament as we move into the next stage of negotiations," she said.

"And we're continuing to work on further assurances, on further undertakings from the European Union in relation to the concern that's been expressed by Parliamentarians."
'Plan is to win'

The prime minister's deal is facing opposition from many of her own MPs, as well as Labour and other opposition parties including the Remain-supporting Liberal Democrats.

The DUP - which Mrs May's Conservative Party relies on for a majority in Parliament - has said it will not back the deal.

But Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng dismissed suggestions that the government had accepted it would lose next week's vote and was planning on returning to Brussels.

"The plan is to win the vote on Tuesday, or whenever it comes," Mr Kwarteng told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He said a week was "a very long time in politics" and he was "very hopeful" the deal would be voted through.

Meanwhile, writing in Daily Telegraph, ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the option of leaving the EU with no deal was "closest to what people actually voted for" in the 2016 EU referendum.

And Tory MP Damian Green - also an ex-cabinet minister - said the onus was on MPs to say what deal they would support.
'United on one thing'

Tory Dame Caroline Spelman, who organised the MPs' letter with Labour MP Jack Dromey, said "crashing out" of the EU without a deal would cause job losses.

Dame Caroline - a Remain supporter who was environment secretary for two years when David Cameron was prime minister - told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour programme that 209 MPs had signed the letter.

Asked if the prime minister "gets it", Dame Caroline said: "Yes, I definitely think she gets it. She wouldn't have invited us to come in and see her if she didn't."

Dame Caroline said the signatories to her letter included Brexit and Remain supporters - but the letter did not bind them to supporting the PM's withdrawal deal.

Media playback is unsupported on your device
Media captionDame Caroline Spelman says 209 MPs have signed a letter urging the prime minister to rule out a 'no deal' Brexit

Instead, Dame Caroline said, it created a "platform" which would "stabilise the economy and give reassurance to manufacturing".

"We are united on one thing - we want to protect jobs and livelihoods by making sure we don't crash out without a deal," she said.

The MPs have been invited to meet the prime minister on Tuesday.

said that after delaying the vote on her Brexit deal last month, she attended the European Council, where there was "some further movement from the EU".

The EU have said there has been no movement.

The EU have said there has been no movement.

Leading to the interesting dilemma for the brain-dead. Do they believe proven liar Theresa May over the hated EU, or not ?

All immaterial, really. There will be no vote.

{The EU have said there has been no movement.}
Not true. There has been a massive change, the WA document for signing has been changed from 'white' paper a nice shade of cream.
Maybe next time she goes she can get the embossing of the EU and UK crests made a bit more prominent.
I am just jealous I haven't been paid £550 to drive a truck around 100 miles in total. I wonder if HMRC will allow me to increase my business mileage allowance?

@Mrsr8 , while i clearly suffered actual poor care and serious consequential health problems from poor maternity care, my dh suffered pretty terrible "collateral damage " especially as people gave even less of a shiny shit about him. This then affected me and my dd as he was unable to cope with my health disaster.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/boris-johnson-repeats-apology-hillsborough-11256630.amp

Johnson has made some particularly vile remarks, even by his standard, about Liverpool and Hillsborough and tried to blame the fans for drunkenness and fighting to get into the ground.
Hillsborough epitomises a lot of really shit things about the 80’s - the bile against the working class, Police corruption on a massive scale etc.
The way the victims and their families were treated and the attempt to pin the blame on the fans was horrific. The Police took the blood alcohol levels of all the victims including the children, the youngest of whom was 10 years old.
The families were told over and over again to move on but they refused. The dignity shown by the families was awe inspiring.
Jenny and Trevor Hicks lost both their daughters. Leslie and Doreen Jones lost their son and his fiancée. Margaret Aspinall lost her 18 year old son. All of them campaigned tirelessly to clear the fans of any blame and to get the Unlawfully Killed verdict.
It took them 27 years but they did it. Those are the sort of people who deserve an Honour, whether or not they choose to accept it, rather than the likes of John Redwood and Cameron’s hairdresser

Mrs8 - birth trauma can remain so very raw. Remind yourself, just words on a screen, and step away. Get outside in the fresh air for a few minutes if you can?