Westminstenders: What The Hell Happens Next?!

[RedToothBrush]

John Bercow has just spent over at an hour dealing with a Points of Order, in which he has argued that he is defending the soverignty of the House of Commons and that is his duty, not to simply to be a cheerleader for the executive.

Taking back control seems to have rather upset ERG Brexiteers.

As Jess Phillips astutely pointed out:
"People only care about procedures, and protecting and conserving the procedures, when they don't like the outcome of the thing that is about to happen and never when it is going in their favour."

And given what we have seen the Executive do over the last few months in terms of trying to use procedure for its own political gain, this is quite a fair point.

There are however certain constitutional questions this is all raising. And we have a very real constitutional crisis here.

Bercow has ruled that he CAN allow an amendment (because the previous vote had prevented only a motion and a debate) put forward by Grieve to go to a vote.

This amendment would - if it is passed by the house - require May to report to the house within 3 days if the WA fails to pass next week.

This would be a significant victory, if it passed because at present the position is where May can delay reporting back to the house until it start to get to the point where politically the opposition can't influence things, and a 'meaningful vote' will in practice be more like a gun to the head by the Executive, rather than the House of Commons acting in a sovereign manner and being free to make its own decisions rather than be forced into a corner by Parliamentary Procedure and the politicking of Parliamentary Procedure to undermine the independence of the HoC.

Allowing more time for the opposition to hold the government to account, does not necessarily change anything. It just means the executive can not just run down the clock in the way it perhaps has been intending.

The HoC could of course, vote against the amendment.

The WA is to come to the HoC next week.

And we have no idea what the hell is going to happen next.

No point in an election until Labour get a decent leader, i.e. one who can actually lead the country. I couldn't stand Blair, but he was what the country needed at that time.

It’s Sod’s law that we ended up with the same pattern in both parties at the same time. Two leaders quite happy to ignore vast swathes of the electorate and their own parties and go their own ditsy way.

How the fuck anyone in Labour thought Corbyn was capable of leading I will never understand, quite apart from his EU perspective.

Time for a cross party Remain group to come forward. I would vote for them in a GE like a shot. Sensible Labour MPs had better get moving now.

Does Mr Corbyn's speech this morning indicate much (any?) change in the Labour position recently? Beyond confirmation that they will not vote next week in favour of the WA (which I am not surprised about) there doesn't seem to be much new in there at all. Disappointed with that, I have to admit.

No point in another election. Tory’s will scrape through again.

While I agree with the sentiment I don’t think that’s completely true - any chance to slash the Tory majority should be taken. We’re better off now than we were before the last election. And I’d love to see the Tories sweat.

But in the aggregate - it won’t materially alter the current landscape in Parliament.

{Yes, but with the breakup of the USSR and now the election of Trump, who seems to be keen to cosy up to Putin, the position has changed. There is less point in being part of an alliance, when the leading power in that alliance decides to forge a relationship with someone they were once against.}
That is a VERY dangerous stance to take.
While we see the grotesque bickering going on in Westminster other world leaders are playing their own games and history tells us to be exceedingly cautious. Doing 'deals' with Russia, China ,USA, N Korea etc is one thing, but putting full trust in what they say is foolish.
Putin has to be seen as 'the big man', being macho and heroic. He has to prove to the people of Russia that he is the great leader and as has been shown he and his predecessors are ruthless under any surface 'nicety'. In the development of the atomic bomb in WW2, his 'spy' took the plans for the bomb from Winston Churchill's desk in London.
He also had at least 2 informants, highly skilled scientists, working at Los Alamos on the bomb itself, passing details and drawings back to the USSR. The first USSR atomic bomb was a direct copy of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Methods may have changed slightly over the years. Novichok appearing in Salisbury perhaps.
There is concern over Huwei the 'phone' maker from China as some of the computer gear has inbuilt almost undetectable 'spying' technology that sends data back to China. Even if you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you.

All along, I've been worried about No Deal because Corbyn,:
supports Brexit
is ignorant about how to negotiate it
is ignorant about its full consequences
and is also seriously lacking in knowledge about the HoC & the British constituion work.

If we had any normal, even bog-standard, Labour leader, I would have no worries about No Deal happening,
because with the Tory rebels it would be easily avoidable now.

In fact, so would any Brexit be.

That survey we saw recently over who would be elected next Labour leader if Corbyn went - it showed McDonnell in 2nd place (and very close to the first choice Emily Thornberry). Yvette Cooper was well behind.

So if Corbyn fell under a bus, his successor might well be more of the same.

It was Stalin in WW2 obviously. Putin hasn't had that many face lifts.
He cemented his power by sending all his 'opposition' to Siberia for a long holiday and others were just murdered.

A GE now, with Labour officially supporting Brexit, could deliver a landslide Tory vistory,
if Labour Remainers abandon Labour as they have been telling the pollsters.

^If the Tories stick to Brexit, they'll keep most of their votes
If Labour stick to Brexit, the'll probably lose many of theirs.^

Polls indicate that Leave / Remain is more important than party affilitation.
Remainers indulged in wishful thinking at the last GE, making Corbyn into something he isn't
Many will realise finally that he is a Brexiter - and vote for a Remain party

It was clear enough last time if you thought about it for 2 minutes. I voted Lib Dem due solely to Brexit - a completely wasted vote in our constituency.

Evan Davis @ EvanHD
Silly question: could Theresa May on Wednesday morning rule out "no deal" by asking MPs to make her deal the legal Brexit default, while not actually approving it yet? At the same time, she could offer parliamentary time for debates and votes on alternative approaches.

This is an interesting idea.

A Remainer as leader, even coming a close 2nd, would probably change policies

Corbyn can get away with going against 70% of the memberhip because of the huge vote before they listened to who he is

Even McDonnell would be better than Corbyn, imo

• McDonnell has seemed much more open to the idea of a PV

but has avoided disagreeing with Corbyn openly

Very interesting idea:
That WA as default would safeguard against No Deal disaster.

However, it would then be difficult to get anything else, even if the debate time was written into the amendment

any chance to slash the Tory majority should be taken. We’re better off now than we were before the last election.

I would like to be able to agree with this, but I can't. Any impact on Tory policy (e.g. recent amendments, choice for Northern Irish women) has been made in spite of the Labour front bench rather than because of them. Universal Credit mess etc continues. And we will get Brexit from a Corbyn-led government anyway - plus then allowing Labour to be held entirely responsible for it all through being in power on 29 March, and that will be the narrative the Tories put forward for years, as they did with the financial crisis. The Tories got us into this and they should take the rap.

😂😂 Light relief:
Lovely thread from borderirish about the temporary Norway idea coming up again:

"I see Brexit wants to kip on Norway’s couch while it gets its life together"

https://mobile.twitter.com/BorderIrish/status/1057262703176310784

Î agree, muffin

It's not just Brexit:
Corbyn throughout has been bloody useless as Leader of the Official Opposition

The Tories have got away with murder

There are already signs of this happening. The co-ordinator of our local foodbank reports that they are down on donations at the moment. She wonders if people are prepping for No Deal instead

Our local foodbank said they didn't want food but other stuff like toiletries, loo roll etc. I'd have thought they'd want what they had room to store with Brexit looming.

This thread is the only thing that makes any sense of what's going on at all.

Thank you for your time.

It was clear enough last time if you thought about it for 2 minutes. I voted Lib Dem due solely to Brexit - a completely wasted vote in our constituency.

If there was a general election, if we all voted Lib dems, it might be our only chance of getting a second referendum

Placemarking. Missed the Corbyn speech, due to actually having to do some bloody work, but will catch up now.

Feel an idiot for being taken in by him. I don't even want a GE now, that's how angry I feel with Corbyn and his utter fucking uselessness/mendacity/bit of both.

What a time to be alive.

Yes we need to do to Labour what UKIP did to the tories. Unfortunately the bbc and other media were complicit in helping UKIP shift tory policy and I can't see that happening this time.

1tis - re hauwei - I don't believe anyone has shown any inappropriate phone home capability on that kit - it certainly would not be 'undetectable'. I might suspect that the primary concern would be a remote disruption capability - however the cynic in me would suspect lobbyists protecting their markets.

(in the same vein though - we don't really hear about nsa capability with cisco and other US designed equipment - if you wanted an espionage capability then targeting routers and equivalent would be much more likely and beneficial than hitting telco switches?)