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.

I'm still reeling from the "Uncivil Warr" Cumberbatch show on Monday. And a few shifts in my understanding.

1. The fact that the referendum was non-binding meant that the leave/ remain campaigns could say anything they liked (or lie...) without any recourse.
2. Paraphrasing the choice on the ballot paper to "Are you happy with the staus quo?" makes it easier to understand leave-voters motivation.
3. Subliminal advertising, co-ercive clicking and leading...it's been around for ages, and it's so well hidden that we cannot be aware of all the different ways we are being targeted. To use my favourite malapropism, Pandora is well and truly out of the box now!

Off to catch up with rest of thread now.

Interesting article from Fintan. Britain's (mostly England's) recent revolutionary bloodletting has been happening on the Island of Ireland. Violence on foot of Brexit is most likely to happen in NI.

Brexiteers create a false scenario and attribute it to a lack of Brexit. They pooh- pooh any resurgence in NI, while saying it would most likely happen in GB if Brexit didn't happen.

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-british-wrong-to-think-revolutions-are-bloodless-1.3750211

Brexit programme blew my mind, it was a clever campaign with no holds barred. The power of a line.

The disgruntled voting for something that will hit them first in a downturn

There is a big problem with a GE in that neither main side has truly acknowledges what is 'wrong' with the UK. They are concentrating on the Brexit fiasco as a day to day occurrence.
David Cameron set fire to the UK by holding the referendum. It started burning slowly until May was elected who promptly poured petrol on the fire. The first room (parts of industry) was well alight at this point with businesses who trade using JIT being suitably worried and so commencing alternative plans. With May stepping up the risk of business failure, they have simply progressed their plans for leaving.
Although physically still present in the UK, they are already gone, along with jobs and inward investment. They will not be coming back, the government does not have enough cash to bribe them (which would be illegal in EU terms I think). The 2 years, having triggered A50 has seen the government pour more petrol onto the fire while throwing bricks at the EU firemen.
The first room (industry) has almost burned out. The current room is well alight and probably can't be saved. The next rooms are one containing dynamite (no deal) and another with a door to the outside and safety or a third door to a room with baby crocodiles, danger but negotiable.
Meanwhile the government are simply 4 hamsters on a wheel who collectively are not turning the wheel anywhere.

Was the Brexit Civil War program based on anything factual? other than the writer's imagination?

Whilst excellent drama, on reflection i thought it was just another example of how we are all being manipulated :(

{Why on earth would the EU allow us a fast track rejoin?
That would be ridiculous.}

They have repeatedly said they would. We can probably keep the Pound and out of Schengen but pay the proper rate for membership. I would also envisage a 'no buggering about' rule too.
They see and understand the politics of all members and appreciate that although they can't intervene directly as the UK is sovereign, they know that as industrial and cultural partners there is a lot of good that comes from the UK being in the EU. Leavers may just say 'they want the money' but it is far deeper than that as culturally the majority of the UK are similar to those of the Northern EU countries.

It was based on Cummings's blog and it had Craig Oliver as a consultant. The writer explained in a conversation with Carole Cadwalladr in the Guardian yesterday, that some scenes were conflated and others were imagined.

Well. The Sun now reporting that the Corbyn speech on Thursday is going to distance Labour from a second referendum.

Which was, if you remember, on the road map laid out at Conference, following pressure from members.

It's clearly more than triangulation/refusal to be coerced into an attackable position.

Considering that the momentum for a PV had gathered inside and outside Parliament before Christmas, I'm actually quite angry.

I bet my previous employer (based a couple of minutes off teh M3) wishes they'd embraced teleworking now.

I wonder if the Cooper amendment could be used as leverage by the marginalised civil service ? Because it only works if "no deal" spending is clearly highlighted in the budget as such. It won't work if the every department is allowed to spend £1,000,000,000 apiece on "stationary".

.

and ...

Meanwhile, here's what the UK will miss out on, ex-EU. Even as it's also picking up in the states ...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46797396

It is frustrating: you buy a new appliance then just after the warranty runs out, it gives up the ghost.

You can’t repair it and can’t find anyone else to at a decent price, so it joins the global mountain of junk.

You’re forced to buy a replacement, which fuels climate change from the greenhouse gases released in the manufacturing process.

But help is at hand, because citizens in the EU and parts of the USA will soon get a "right to repair" - of sorts.

(contd)

Well. The Sun now reporting that the Corbyn speech on Thursday is going to distance Labour from a second referendum

If he does, then he'll have to place Labour firmly behind a revoke, otherwise, he may just as well go into coalition with the Tories.

Personally, i'm now slightly more sceptical of a PV and would prefer a revoke, based on that the referendum was not entirely legal (funding) and the illegal use of data and targeted ad's means that the result is questionable.
If only 600k voters had voted differently, brexit wouldn't have happened.
No functioning democracy should do something irreversible based on lies and fraud
(i do not believe there is a fast track rejoin option, the E27 has to agree and the political fall out would be huge unless we had a decisive referendum result to go back in)

The thing with a hypothetical rejoin - well, one of the things - is that AFAIK, as it stands, any one Member State can veto a new join. (Which is just one reason that the Leave 'Turkey will join and we will be full of BROWN PEOPLE, ARRRRRGH! racist shite was such shite - AS A MEMBER STATE WE COULD HAVE VETOED IT ANYWAY ahem. Sorry about that). Anyway. So, were we to want to rejoin, we could be vetoed by any MS with an issue with us, such as the small ongoing thing with Spain over Gibralter. Can't see Spain (or others) agreeing to lose that veto either, not least because that sets a precedent which no one, including us, would like.

Just, bloody hell. That's my main comment on this fiasco. Bloody hell.

Corbyn is all over the place - such an irritation at this point

It was interesting to see footage of Cameron leaving no 10 in that programme - he really did have the pallor of a man who has unleashed holy hell and knows it and then scuttles away

Mother
I think it was stated by Mr Junker possibly 6 months or so ago. It has been referenced on Westminsterenders so maybe someone with a better memory can find it.
The EU have always said that they regret the UK's decision to leave but that they respect that decision.
The 4 pillars founding the EU cannot be broken for anyone, it is entirely understandable why, just as you wouldn't take one of the wheels off your car. Why May and the cabinet deliberately set their red lines to do exactly this is beyond any rational person's thought.
For the UK to deliberately attempt to break up/damage the EU was always going to end in tears unless the intention from the beginning was to become an USA lap dog, now messed up by the erratic behaviour of Trump. Has a more moderate POTUS been in the White House being a poodle might not have been a terrible option, apart from losing everything the Leaver's said they wanted by leaving the EU, but the lure of chlorinated cheap chicken is so GOOD.
This might indeed have been the original plan, but spoiled by the Trump. This of course would mean the UK government did not think through the direction of the UK as a long term plan, but as we see now, long term planning seems to get us to March 29th followed by a handful of half baked underfunded projects doomed to failure. HS2 to nowhere (sorry Manchester), a couple of sticking plasters and some phones to the NHS (no one manning the phones though) the list probably goes on.

The "right to repair" was being reported on the Beeb this morning as a UK govt initiative...
Lying bastards

www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2019/jan/09/brexit-latest-news-debate-pmqs-may-corbyn-grieve-mps-launch-bid-to-ensure-they-vote-on-plan-b-within-three-days-if-mays-deal-defeated-politics-live

MPs launch bid to ensure they get vote on plan B within 3 days of WA vote. See 09.05 on the live feed.

AFAIK if the UK were to want to rejoin DURING the TRANSITION PERIOD, we would be fast tracked. Obviously there would be conditions but IIRC it would only need a majority of the EU members to approve not unanimous. We get a 'boost' from previous 'good behaviour. If we actually leave without a transition (WA not signed) then to get back in we would have to fit all the criteria and that is questionable.

Robert Peston @Peston

The UK can have as many plans as it wants, the EU has only 3 options on the table, No deal, WA or revoke.

I have not watched the uncivil war yet. I will say that about 10 days before the ref, the penny dropped with me with regard to the points melaniecheeks makes because I've studied propaganda and history and things going on were textbook from that in quite an alarming fashion.

None of the subsequent revelations from FB are particularly shocking in that context: it was easy to see what was going on if you had that background in education. The BBC in particular should have all over it like a rash - if for no other reason that my lecturer did bbc employee training sessions for them on that exact module on propaganda!!! He was a fab lecturer and was a particular favourite with students definitely not someone you snored though.

I'm fascinated as to what the programme will actually say and how close to what I felt at the time (and posted in panic on MN when the penny dropped)

Interesting tone to the Daily Mail front cover ... certainly going to nudge the moderate Mailistas (if that's not an oxymoron) away from UKIP